Space is a visual theater that the Vancouver-based artist explores by layering it to create intangible landscapes that invite us to look beyond form.
It’s all about perception. Shaped by juxtaposing several parallel layers of transparent shapes or colors that he suspends, his works provide the illusion of a third dimension, the alternation of layers creating a vaporous depth and giving substance to the immateriality of space.
He encloses certain creations in glass cases as works of art, but also as unknown forces that it is more prudent to master. A quasi-cosmic power emerges indeed from these forms in suspension, that they are concentrated in nebula with Spatial Image Sculpture, or that they involve the eye in a whirlwind with the clashing of the particles of Holos, referring to the new disordered state of the matter recently discovered by physicists.
Borrowed from the ancient Greek word for “everything,” the title of this work encourages us to take the measure of the infinity of possibilities. We feel like Pandora in front of these works under glass, around which we cannot help but turn to better apprehend them. While our digital world focuses on images and multiplies pixels to reach infinite precision, David Spriggs breaks down and explodes forms to make us perceive other visual landscapes.
It is up to us to discover them through our mental reconstruction, as in another work entitled Gravity, putting our senses in levitation. In his series of installations, explicitly named Stratachrome, the artist uses planes of colors to explore their symbolism and play with their aesthetic, sensory, and psychological effects.
In his latest installation, Black & White, he has created two dual forms that refer to the Manichaeism inherent in its title, inviting us to move between and around the volumes to change our point of view and make the invisible visible.
Sophie Reyssat