Origins
Triptych · 2018
- ArtistDavid Spriggs
- Date2018
- DimensionsEach artwork: 53 × 186 × 28 cm
21 × 73 × 11 in - MaterialsPainted layered transparencies in illuminated display cases
- CollectionCollection Pierre Miron, Montréal
Three images of origin stand beside one another: an aperture of vision, a human figure, and the double helix of genetic inheritance.
Origins brings seeing, embodiment, and biological code into a single ensemble. Each sculpture isolates a structure through which identity is formed: the eye frames the visible world, the body locates the self within it, and DNA carries information across generations.
None offers a complete account of where a person begins. Together, the works position origin at the intersection of perception, corporeality, and inheritance. Their images appear both immediately recognisable and beyond reach, as though emerging through memory or being viewed across a threshold.
Three conditions of being
The triptych moves between radically different scales: the optical opening, the whole body, and the molecular structure. This passage from sight to self to code resists a single image of human identity. What we are is presented as a relation between lived experience and inherited form.
Light gives each image a spectral presence. The figures are legible yet never fully solid, mirroring the status of origins themselves: invoked as explanations of the present, but never available as complete and direct experience.
Origins is in the Collection Pierre Miron, Montréal. The triptych has been presented in Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; QAGOMA, Brisbane; ArtScience Museum, Singapore; Kunsthal Rotterdam; and the Brooklyn Museum, New York.