Have you ever been so busy you felt like your head was going to explode? One of Zachary Smith’s pieces has the perfect visual representation for this feeling, in his gallery “Portraiture.”
The piece takes up a majority of the wall in the Calkins Hall FORM gallery. A topless torso is stapled to the wall, its head cut into pieces.
When you cut things, it is usually easy to tell where it belongs originally. In this case, the pieces that would assumedly be the head are unrecognizable. They spread out across the wall, all different shapes with no immediate place for them to fit.
The explosion of the head is usually a signifier of chaos, and this portrait does a great job of representing that chaos.
The remainder of the gallery was in bits and pieces. This imagery may seem as though Smith cut up many pieces and placed them throughout the gallery, however, this is not what the gallery looks like. Almost every piece in the gallery was created with “missing” pieces.
My favorite piece in the gallery is one of a young girl. A long strip of cloth covers her face, cutting off her eyes from the viewers. Her purple hair looks almost chalky, and has streaks of white and black going through it. The paint used to create this piece gives off the same look as chalk on a chalkboard.
The portrait primarily captured my attention because it was turned sideways. Most photos, especially portraits, are done head on, but this one challenges that norm.
“Portraiture” is comprised of large pieces that engulf the room, keeping the viewer searching for the little details that make each piece unique.
The gallery’s chopped and skewed look allows the viewers to put together each piece on their own to recreate a new image that fits their view.