Comprising hundreds of images that Shearer culled from eBay or personal homepages, Guitar No. 5 not only documents the evershifting inventory of images available on the Internet but also portrays a virtual community of individuals invested in collective rock-star fantasies. Among the anonymous images, the artist has included photographs of himself as a teenager, proudly posing with his own guitars – an autobiographical twist to his anthropological study that affirms his own participation in the heavy-metal subculture.
