Portrait of Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt using faeces

SAN FRANCISCO — Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has been immortalised — in poop.

At an exhibition in San Francisco running till May 31, a portrait of Mr Schmidt has been hung up, made entirely from human faeces.

The artwork was created by an artist known as Katsu, who reportedly used his own poop to paint the portrait. To complete the aesthetics, the portrait comes in a flashing LED light frame.

Katsu said he had to wear a mask, gloves and use a lot of hand sanitiser. He added: “Lots of flies play with me while I’m painting.”

Katsu told TechCrunch that the painting was part of a series known as “S***heads”. Earlier this year, Katsu had also painted a portrait of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg using the same method.

According to Katsu, part of the inspiration behind his work came from the “incredible attention, obsession and worship” of the Zuckerbergs and Tim Cooks of the world.

“They are the titans of the cloud. They may be worse than the worst oil tycoons,” Katsu said in an interview with BusinessInsider.

“We put them on this pedestal of greatness, but they represent this vast separation in class and culture,” he added to TechCrunch.

“These titans of the cloud, are like, basically in competition to control every bit of granular data about individuals. That’s what makes their companies so powerful. They understand that human data has this immense value and they’re shielding and hiding that from the public.

“Maybe faeces is the last thing that they could possibly control,” he noted.

Katsu’s painting of Mr Zuckerberg has already been sold for an unknown price, according to TechCrunch.

The portrait of Mr Schmidt is on display at the Gray Area Festival in San Francisco’s Mission District. Katsu is part of an artist collective known as Free Art and Technology Lab, or FAT Lab.

Sources: TechCrunch, Business Insider