David Spriggs. Regisole - Sun King. 2015
Dimensions: 479 x 184 x 579 cm / 188.5 x 72.5 x 228 inches
3D installation artwork, acrylic spray paint on layers of transparent film, springs, t-bars, lighting. Digital modelling by Ian Spriggs.
Regisole is part of Spriggs' solo exhibition PRISM at Arsenal Montreal.
For his solo exhibition at the Arsenal (Montreal), English-born and now Vancouver-based artist David Spriggs has produced a new series of eight, large-scale works that speak of modern surveillance, colour, and symbols of power. Looking at various icons, structures and mechanisms of contemporary surveillance, Spriggs exposes the relationship between optics and mechanisms of surveillance that are omnipresent aspects of contemporary life.
Spriggs works are constituted of a succession of transparent acetate sheets on which he has hand-drawn shapes. When superposed these independent shapes recreate 3D volumes. Through this technique, the artist plays on the composition and decomposition of the visitors’ perceived reality.
The exhibition title, PRISM, refers both to the optical apparatus and a US National Security Agency program. In optics, a prism is a transparent element with flat, polished surfaces that refract light, separating a beam of white light into the spectrum of colours that compose it. Whereas the US National Security Agency program is a mass electronic surveillance data mining program that was leaked to the world by Edward Snowden in 2009. The artist has thus become interested in different methods of surveillance from past to present: Panoptic architecture, video surveillance, digital scanners, etc. Through this new series of work, David Spriggs explores our relationship to authority and questions its control. A monumental work titled Regisole (Sun King) anchors the exhibition, the sheer size of this work immediately situates the viewer as a dominated and observed entity; a pawn in a much larger game.
Regisole means Sun King. Regis is Latin for king, and Sol means the sun. Regisole was an ancient equestrian statue originally erected during the 4th century BC for a Roman Emperor in Ravenna, Italy. It was destroyed after the French Revolution by the Jacobin Club of Pavia since it was seen as a symbol of monarchy. It was, at the time, one of the most famous equestrian sculptures from the Roman Empire. It was gilded, which reflected the sunlight and how it got its nickname the Sun King. Spriggs was drawn to this relationship between light and state power. The positioning of the riot guard and the horse very accurately represents the description of the original Regisole. Over the years the Regisole sculpture has influenced a great number of other sculptures, including the equestrian statue of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius that still stands at the Campidoglio in Rome. Spriggs drew on this history for his installation Regisole to bring together notions of power, colour and vision in order to create this contemporary symbol.
