Twenty-Seven Cubist Portraits is an ongoing project begun several years ago. Each portrait is a composite of a dozen or so photographs––parts of the face in extreme closeup––which have been merged in Photoshop. Like Cubist paintings, multiple views of a face are presented simultaneously, creating a distorted visage alternately disturbing or funny or beautiful. Because our brains are hard-wired to see faces in the normal configuration, a peculiar tension is inescapable, offering viewers a vehicle for the exploration and contemplation of their own emotional response.

 

Each subject is merged numerous times using the same set of closeups, yet the resulting portraits vary in unpredictable and surprising ways. These have become movies. The videos present the portraits in sequence, evoking a proto-narrative. The multiplication of faces in a space, morphing at different speeds and competing for attention, seeks to engender a lived cubist experience.

 

Tom Wojciechowski is a visual artist working in a variety of media; he produces paintings, drawings, installations and books in addition to large-format photo-based projects. His photo-based work usually involves some form of subversion of the photographer's craft, or an experimental approach to the hardware, software, and traditions of photography. In 2011, he organized and collaborated in The New Big is Small at FPAC Gallery, an exhibit of small works by three painters accompanied by six foot tall photographic "portraits" of those artists' hands. He organized/curated a group show of immersive miniature cycloramas at Art at Twelve in 2009. In 2008 he received an FPAC grant for public art installing a one hundred foot long fence banner in Fort Point, Boston. His work has been exhibited in numerous group shows and solo shows in venues like libraries and lobbies.