The Spectacle: Photo-realistic paintings of people taking selfies at art museums

It's a sign of our times when artists start to create work that features people visiting art museums, taking selfies of themselves in front of various paintings, i.e. paintings of people taking photographs in front of paintings, so to speak. This is exactly what Croatian artist Stjepan Šandrk has depicted through his latest series, The Spectacle, where he crafted realistic imitations of a photograph of people visiting museums and interacting with art.

A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia, he began the series two years ago: "The scenes in question are not documentary, but rather a staged reality created through digital manipulation, and then transferred into the medium of painting. These artworks are at the same time the falsification of reality, as well as its product."

When you consider each painting, you wonder if Šandrk is mocking his subjects; disgusted, perhaps, by the rise of smartphones in galleries and exhibition spaces, when before people would simply enjoy an artwork without the need to document it. Or, quite simply, he is documenting modern culture – highlighting what has changed, in contrast to some of the classic paintings featured in the background. Discover more of The Spectacle at ssandrk.tumblr.com.

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