Artwork Description
Shawn Smith – Glitched Ram
Dimensions: 32 x 56 x 13″ sculpture
Year: 2018
Medium: plywood, ink, acrylic paint
Shawn Smith’s “Glitched Ram” uses visual language to depict the intersection between natural life and rapidly developing technology. By rendering the ram in bright colors, reminiscent of a frozen computer screen, Smith suggests that human progress with regards to addressing species extinction is often slower and fraught with challenges, slipping behind the pace needed to ensure survival of animals like the ram.
Shawn Smith’s work focuses on themes of labor, technology, and science, where each of his sculptural pieces depicts a species facing extinction through human influence. Smith believes that the increasing quantities of technology in our day-to-day lives has begun to set the standard for our inter-species relations, through which we often view animals in the light of a screen rather than in a natural environment. By pixelating his works, Smith both demands acknowledgement for the animals decreasing numbers and for viewers to question their relationship with technology. Smith’s works cannot be viewed accurately through images, but rather, must be seen in person to understand the craftsmanship required to construct them and their full range of depth and color. This interacts with his conceptualizations of ‘detachment’, where attachment to his work is contingent upon reality rather than technological encounters. Smith also draws on the idea of process within his oeuvre by playing with construction and deconstruction; each of his sculptural works are reduced to mere pixels, yet are made from individually hand-cut and dyed blocks. Consistent with his participation in Turner Carroll’s Science as Art exhibition, Smith casts himself in the role of ‘artist as alchemist’, drawing on precise measurements to render visual representations of dying species in a way that positions him as an artistic and mathematical creator.
by Keira Seidenberg, Art History/Gender Studies student, McGill University