David Spriggs | Dimensionalism

Vancouver Island-based installation artist David Spriggs creates works that look suspended in space by layering images painted on glass and plexiglass transparencies to create the illusion of three-dimensional landscapes. Often massive in scale, these intricate, ephemeral forms — made from 18 to 400 layers — appear to shift and move, depending on the light and the position of the viewer. 

“I’ve been working primarily with a kind of layered space, working on transparency through space to create these almost holographic-like sculptures,” Spriggs tells Mark Mushet in this video commissioned by Galleries West.

“These works are, in a sense, about time itself and our experience of time.”

Spriggs was born in Manchester, England and moved to Canada in 1992. He holds a BFA in painting and sculpture from what is now the Emily Carr University of Art & Design and earned an MFA in sculpture from Concordia University in 2007. In January 2023, his work, “Red Gravity,” was used as the cover for Peter Gabriel’s song, Panopticom, and it is now part of Gabriel’s i/o album tour. 

Spriggs’ work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Messum’s Wiltshire in the United Kingdom, the Prague Bienniale, and at the Arsenal Contemporary in Montreal, as well as group shows including the Sharjah Biennial and the Arts Council Montreal. ■

David Spriggs: Dimensionalism is at Paul Kyle Gallery from Nov. 18 to Jan. 20, 2024.

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