SMACK
Photo: courtesy of the artist
SMACK
Established 2005, The Netherlands
Based in Breda
Ground Level
NGV International
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PROJECT
The famed The Garden of Earthly Delights, c. 1495–1505, by the Dutch artist Hieronymous Bosch is a Renaissance-period cautionary tale of the Christian Old Testament narrative of the fall of humanity and its dire consequences. Both this painting and the digital work SPECULUM by Dutch collective SMACK comprise three distinct scenes: The Garden of Eden, Paradise and Hell.
SMACK describes their Garden of Eden, as California’s ‘Silicon Valley turned inside out’ with the banal temptations of modernity, consumerism and the obsession with technology taking the place of the Devil’s apple offered to Adam and Eve, which led to their downfall. The impact on humanity of its corruption in Eden is played out in Paradise, described by SMACK as the twenty-first century being inhabited by a deeply flawed ‘projection of our digital selves, a garden of superegos’.
The price of corruption is illustrated in Hell, where the unrestrained pleasure experienced in Paradise is supplanted by torment, punishment and pain. SMACK describe it as ‘a projection of our fears’, which could become our reality.
SPECULUM, and the work that inspired it, is the artists’ criticism of the actions and immorality of their times. Here, viewers are confronted with the consequences of indulgent consumerism, popularist politics and conspicuous consumption.
ABOUT
SMACK is the trio of digital artists Ton Meijdam, Thom Snels and Béla Zsigmond. Using computer animation, they build figurative video works and generative art exploring issues such as digital identity, surveillance culture and mass behaviour. All three studied at St. Joost School of Art & Design (AKV), Netherlands, and began working together in 2005. They have won numerous prizes, including at Amsterdam Film Experience, the European Design Awards and the UK Music Video Awards. SMACK’s work has been exhibited in the Netherlands, UK, Spain and South Korea, including at the Stedelijk Museum Breda, Colnaghi Gallery, London, and Matadero Madrid.
Courtesy of the artist and Colección SOLO, Madrid