White Wave
Spatial painting · 2023
- ArtistDavid Spriggs
- Dimensions156 × 91 × 91 cm
60 × 36 × 36 in - MaterialsAcrylic on layered plexiglass in display case
White Wave suspends a crest at the moment before it breaks. The image appears weightless yet charged, holding the force of an event within a field of light, pigment, and transparent depth.
The wave is both a recognisable form and an image of continual transformation. Its body rises, folds, and disperses without arriving at a final state. Motion is not represented as a sequence. It is compressed into a single spatial encounter.
From the principal viewpoint, separate painted planes gather into a luminous volume. From the side, the crest dissolves into edges and empty intervals. The work makes the coherence of the image inseparable from the position of the viewer.
White as force
White operates here as an active concentration of light. It evokes spray, vapour, glare, and the visual intensity of water at the point of rupture. Its apparent purity is unsettled by the violence and instability of the form it describes.
As light passes through the painted planes, the colour thickens towards the centre of the wave and thins at its edges. Density is produced optically, while the physical structure remains permeable.
An event held in space
The work does not offer a stable sculptural mass. Its apparent volume is assembled in perception and changes as the viewer moves. What appears frontal and immediate becomes fragmented and extended from another position.
This instability gives the wave a temporal dimension. The image seems to contain emergence, impact, and dispersal at once, while remaining suspended at the threshold between them.
Image and structure
The wave is divided across painted plexiglass planes held within an illuminated display case. Their alignment establishes the image from the front. Movement reveals the intervals between them, allowing the crest to form and disperse within the viewer’s field of vision.