Image © Sam Lubell

Our friends at Oyler Wu are putting the finishing touches on their collaboration with artist Michael Kalish that brings a pixelated face of Muhammad Ali to L.A. Live’s plaza in Downtown Los Angeles. The sculpture, reALIze, which has its official unveiling tomorrow night, consists of a large frame of hundreds of aluminum tubes on which 1,300 speed bags are hung via steel cables. From most angles it looks like a bit of a jumble, but from straight on, the composition of light and dark bags indeed forms an impressive likeness of the champ.

The project was engineered by Buro Happold, with the aluminum coming from M&K Metal, in whose parking lot the installation was prefabricated before being re-assembled Downtown. The project will remain up until April 9, and the team hopes to move it to other cities. Why Ali? The artist has long been interested in American Icons, producing likenesses of Einstein, Charles Lindbergh, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison, to name a few. More pix of the sculpture being finished below: