“Untitled” presents a “forbidden image” that Andrews obtained from the website for a company that offers gay cruises. This work depicts a suggestive close-up of the midsection of a clothed male figure. This is one of a series of works by Andrews in which he engages with images barred from the mainstream media. In the show “Jpeg” (2003) this work was displayed alongside images from the war in Iraq that had been censored by television and newspapers, a juxtaposition that posed the question “which is obscene??”
In making this image, Andrews employed an innovative technique of colour separation. His technique consisted of using window screening with pastel crayons. The small divisions inherent in the screening allowed Andrews to create an image out of dots. In their arrangement and in how they function as carriers of bits of information within the representation, Andrews’ dots mimic the dot matrices characteristic of images made using four-color process printing (a type of mechanical reproduction).
Andrews has been interested in how information is systematized through refined codes, like the separation and configuration of dots of colour for instance, in mechanically produced images. His interest in the mechanics of mechanically produced images recalls Sigmar Polke’s preoccupation with manipulating these very codes.