16 Cuboid Float, 2017, Glass, water, aluminum, steel, sunlight, and bio-matter, 276” x 96” x 72”, Hancock Shaker Village
16 Cuboid Float, 2017, Glass, water, aluminum, steel, sunlight, and bio-matter, 276” x 96” x 72”
There is a point where light bends, where glass dissolves into air, or water, where the structure of matter itself seems to hesitate, to flicker between states. It is in this liminal space that David Teeple operates — an artist engaged with perception itself. His work is an inquiry into the messy calibration of how we experience material, space, time, and consciousness — while grounded in contemplation and silence.
From the labyrinthine corridors of his modular glass and water architectures, to the fluid prisms that refract water and light, Teeple is interested in living systems; phenomenological instruments that alter, shift, and recompose themselves in the act of being seen. He engages with space as a non-neutral entity of sorts. At its core, the interplay between the material and immaterial, and the seen and unseen, is where substantive meaning is formed.
The work looks at fluidity, transience, and the organic intelligence of both natural and human systems. His practice is as informed by the laws of physics and quantum mechanics as it is by mystery and contemplation, resulting in works that suggest entropic equilibrium, dynamic instability, and the ceaseless transformation of matter. And it is here, in the interstices, that he seeks to discover a sense of equanimity.
Perceptual Light Play, 2022, Glass, water, steel, light, 42” x 42” x 32” + reflections and shadows
25 Cuboid Stack, 2017, Glass, water, aluminum, steel, sunlight, bio-matter, 144” x 144” x 30”
Overlapping Optical Velocities I (Rendering), 2022, Archival pigment print, 36” x 45”
The Structure of Hermetic Reliability (Rendering), 2022, Archival pigment print, 36” x 45”
Manufactured Turbulence, 45-4088, 2023, Archival pigment photograph, 36” x 48”
Teeple’s photographic work stands at the threshold between materiality and ephemerality, capturing the elusive choreography of water in its infinite manifestations. These images are acts of perception, studies in movement, turbulence, and stillness, each frame an inquiry into the physics of fluid dynamics and the metaphysics of seeing.
In these works, turbulence becomes a kind of language, an articulation of unseen forces. His compositions evoke oscillations of light and perception, where water distorts, conceals, and reveals; a medium that both defines and destabilizes. Each photograph is an event rather than a document, a record of a moment in motion, where time is suspended yet in constant dissolution.
If his installations and sculptures bring water into lived space, his photographs distill its essence into the two-dimensional plane, extending his inquiry across mediums. Together, they form a continuum — sculpture, installation, photography — each a facet of the same philosophical pursuit: the nature of perception, the fluidity of form, and the thresholds between what is seen and what is perceived.