‘SPECULUM: portraits’

Contemporary malaise distilled into ten moving portraits, this spectacular collection of digital artworks by Dutch creative trio, SMACK, reflects on isolation, mass behaviour and interdependence in a hyper-connected world.

Each of the ten characters is taken from SMACK’s earlier piece, SPECULUM, a digital triptych inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’. Created using computer generated imagery and with shrewd references to the present-day, SPECULUM tackles a contemporary landscape of invasive technology and rampant consumerism. In this series, created between 2019 and 2020, the artists focus on selected individuals from their dystopian garden.

SMACK’s digital portraits employ the compositional techniques and perspective of Renaissance painting. The characters are presented in vast landscapes where rocky mountains, burning skies or tree-filled formal gardens provide depth and drama, while at the same time focussing the observer’s attention on the individual portrayed. None of the central figures returns our gaze, lending the works a voyeuristic feel. These are windows, moving snapshots of contemporary ills.

In a modern-day take on the contrapasso of Dante’s ‘Inferno’, in which punishments reference their corresponding sins, SMACK’s ‘Cyberbully’ sees an internet troll tortured on a giant hashtag, while in Big Dada surveillance cameras turn threateningly on their maker. Online identity and self-obsession underlie creations such as ‘Egonaut’ or ‘Self Seeker’, while junk food culture and issues around body image are evident in ‘Crapivore’, ‘Binger’ or ‘Lipophobe’.

SMACK’s characters from SPECULUM featured in ‘Still Human’ at Espacio SOLO Madrid in 2020-2021.