Red Pepper Study
A familiar organic form is divided into images and reconstituted as a translucent object in space.
- Artist
- David Spriggs
- Date
- 1999
- Dimensions
- 18 × 25 × 20 cm
7 × 10 × 8 in
(width × depth × height) - Materials
- Photographic prints on layered plexiglass
Red Pepper Study marks the beginning of Spriggs’ experiments with spatial images. Cross sections of a red pepper were photographed, printed on transparent material, and arranged across separate planes so that the sliced object could be perceived again as a three dimensional form.
The subject connects this early work to the history of still life while the method unsettles the ordinary relation between image and object. The pepper appears present, yet its body is constituted entirely through intervals and acts of visual reconstruction.
Colour, body, and reconstruction
Red concentrates attention on the pepper’s organic and bodily qualities. Associated with ripeness, heat, blood, and vitality, the colour gives the modest subject a heightened physical charge.
The work establishes a question that continues throughout the later practice: how can an image occupy space without becoming a conventional solid object? Here the answer remains visibly experimental. The planes, supports, and gaps are as legible as the form they produce.