Ommatidium

Shawn Smith
Presented in partnership with grayDUCK

Ommatidium explores our complicated relationship with the insect world. The show investigates the darkly humorous marketing of chemical agents to safely annihilate, the extreme championing of aesthetically pleasing and useful insects over all others, the strangely macabre methods of measuring insect population density, and the overlooked beauty of their complex architecture. Ommatidium refers to the compound eye structure that insects use to view the world. With this exhibition, artist Shawn Smith uses this idea of complex vision to encourage viewers to overcome their innate fear and disgust of insects and see them through a different lens. For Ommatidium, Smith diverges from his usual pixelated wooden sculptures to create two and three-dimensional works in a variety of mediums from drawings and collages, to stained glass and 3D prints.