Aura
Spatial painting · 2025
- ArtistDavid Spriggs
- Dimensions56 × 20 × 56 cm
22 × 8 × 22 in - MaterialsUV ink on layered plexiglass and lightbox
- PhotographyDavid Spriggs
Aura concentrates colour at the threshold between object and atmosphere. A luminous horizon appears to hover within the work, changing in density and depth as the viewer moves.
The image has no single supporting surface. Colour is distributed across a sequence of transparent planes, where it accumulates, overlaps, and thins. What appears from the front as a continuous chromatic field becomes, from the side, a set of separated intervals.
The horizon is both an organising line and an unstable threshold. It holds distinctions between above and below, proximity and distance, matter and light, while refusing to resolve them into a fixed spatial order.
Volumetric colour
In Aura, colour behaves as a spatial condition. It is encountered through depth rather than applied to the exterior of an object. Light passes through the image, allowing the chromatic field to extend optically beyond its physical boundaries.
The work’s compact scale intensifies this effect. Its illuminated volume reads at once as a contained object and as an opening onto an indeterminate space.
Image and structure
The layered plexiglass planes divide the image into a sequence of physical depths. Their alignment produces the horizon from the front, while an oblique view reveals the construction and transforms the image into parallel bands of colour and light.