Artists Who Make World-Class Mosaic Art Using Rubik’s Cubes

The Rubik’s Cube has been playing our brains with its fun yet intricate 3-dimensional puzzle game since its invention by Erno Rubik in 1974. Nowadays, it has evolved from the classic Magic Cube to various toys and games that test our dexterity and mental prowess. Many people think “Rubik’s” is associated only with the 6-faced cube toy with each face having 9 squares and representing 6 colours (namely white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow); while that is the classic and original design, there are other Rubik’s toys, puzzles, and games available.

You may want to check out our Rubik’s shop here and see for yourself that there are many Rubik’s toys, games, and puzzles not limited to the classic Magic Cube.

This puzzle toy is such a global craze that Rubik’s Cube enthusiasts and hobbyists are outdoing each other with their “speedcubing” – a word that exists in modern vocabulary mainly because of the Rubik’s Cube. Speedcubing is the art and skill of cracking this 3D puzzle game as fast as you can; solving entails performing a succession of twists that re-works the scrambled puzzle to make every face of the cube a single solid colour (you know what we mean). A person who engages in speedcubing activities is called a “speedcuber” (obviously).

Today, however, the Rubik’s Cube is also being used for artistic expressions. A few speedcubers have jumped from participating in speedcubing competitions and exhibitions to creating mosaics. There are also some artists and designers who use (and have used) Rubik’s Cubes in their works of art.

Here are some of those people who made a mark in the world stage because of their outstanding masterpieces using Rubik’s Cubes.

Josh Chalom / Cube Works Studios

Josh Chalom with his Cube Works Studios is famous for making artworks and re-contextualising them using common objects. They recently made headlines with their mural mosaic portraying a retrospective image of the urban waterfront skyline of Macau in China. It holds the Guinness World Record for the largest Rubik’s Cube mosaic.

Macau's Urban Waterfront Skylline Wall Mosaic | Photo c/o CubeWorks.ca

Chalom and his group are also known for re-creating the works of the Masters using Rubik’s Cubes, such as Michelangelo’s Hand of God and Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper.

K Prithveesh

Prithveesh K Bhat (or K Prithveesh) was an engineering student in India when he discovered that he had a knack for speedcubing . Aside for being a fast speedcuber, Prithveesh is also well-known for his exceptional mosaic artworks using his favourite puzzle toy. Prithveesh and a team of students from SDM Institute of Technology got awarded by the Guinness Book of World Records for making the largest dual-sided Rubik’s Cube mosaic.

Steven Brundage

A corporate entertainer and magician by profession, Steven Brundage became famous with a viral video showing a scene wherein he dumbfounds 2 police officers after astonishingly cracking the Rubik’s Cube in 20 seconds, then again in a second, and as if that’s not done yet – he speedcubes again behind his back.

That it is indeed some kind of a talent! However, Brundage became more popular when he joined America’s Got Talent and made a giant wall of a Rubik’s Cube mosaic in front of the judges.

@Cubearting (Torgeir Amundsen) Et Al

The London-based Rubik’s Brand Ltd commissioned the Norwegian cube artist, Torgeir Amundsen – more popularly known as @Cubearting, to design a pop-art mosaic of Prince Harry in celebration of the Cube’s more than 40 years of existence and counting. The project was joined by UK speedcubing champion George Scholey, London-based magician Taran Harvey-Chadwick, and other local visitors consisting of 308 contributors.

The group successful finished the project and, coincidentally, they also broke the Guinness World Record for the largest number of individual contributors to a Rubik’s Cube Mosaic. The previous number was 293.

Pop-Art Mosaic of Prince Harry with Guinness Book Awardees | Photo c/o Rubik's Brand Ltd

Giovanni Contardi

Former speecubing champion, Giovanni Contardi, is now an acclaimed artist for the NYA (New York Art). This Italian visual artist and cube master is gaining millions of followers all over social media for his magnificent mosaics made from Rubik’s Cubes. He recently made a buzz among Australians when he visited the country and built a Rubik’s mosaic of Jon Snow, a character from the Game of Thrones.

Do you know of other artists and speedcubers who create great masterpieces using the Rubik’s Cube? Tell us about them!