Still Life (Nature Morte)

In Still Life (Nature morte), David Spriggs drew the objects by hand in ink, working directly from life. Packed cases and their contents take shape across multiple transparent planes, bringing the close observation of still life drawing into three dimensions. Outer surfaces and internal structures occupy the same field of vision. Individual details emerge through overlapping contours, allowing the eye to move between an object and the things contained within it. Transparency becomes an active material in this encounter. It opens the objects to view while allowing their drawn contours to accumulate into areas of density and obscurity. As the viewer changes position, the lines shift in relation to one another, altering the clarity and apparent solidity of the forms. The objects’ physical presence develops through the relationship between drawing, depth and the viewer’s movement. The appearance recalls radiography and the inspection of personal belongings. This relationship between objects, transparency and scrutiny would recur in Spriggs’s later Transparency Report, with its focus on objects taken through airport security. In Still Life, the intimacy of drawing from life meets the penetrating gaze of inspection. The French subtitle, Nature morte, carries the still life tradition’s association with mortality. Familiar possessions acquire a spectral presence, their material solidity translated into fragile accumulations of lines suspended in space.