What if the ordinariness of a fruit bowl became a space for reflection on form, matter, and our way of looking at the world? With his series Fruit BowlsSam Nicklin revisits the still life tradition, injecting a contemporary and gently absurdist perspective. His photographic work invites contemplation as much as it prompts questioning.
In Sam Nicklin's world, the fruit bowl is never quite what it seems. In the series Fruit BowlsThe British artist subverts the ordinary to bring forth the extraordinary. Through his compositions, he freezes apples, bananas, grapes… in poses that are both familiar and strangely frozen, as if from a postmodern dream. What at first glance resembles a simple domestic arrangement becomes almost a sculpture, even a symbol.
In the classical tradition, still life evoked the passage of time and ephemeral beauty. In Nicklin's work, these elements persist, but are juxtaposed with a minimalist aesthetic. The fruits, often reduced to pure or highly stylized geometric forms, lose their naturalness and become a language in themselves. Each bowl or plate becomes a self-contained system, a silent setting where everything is calculated, weighed, and sometimes unbalanced.
Behind the refined compositions and formal rigor, a subtle irony emerges. Some bowls appear overflowing, others almost empty. Fruit floats or spills over in a slightly absurd choreography. This tension between order and chaos, between the functional and the decorative, evokes a discreet yet essential smile. Sam Nicklin uses this irony to question our expectations of art objects, of the utilitarian, of everyday life.
Fruit Bowls This isn't a series about fruit. It's a series about looking. About what we choose to see, to recognize, to interpret. By reviving an old genre with very contemporary codes, Nicklin doesn't stop at the photographed objects: he creates small scenes of observation, suspended moments that invite us to slow down. To see what's in the bowl, but also everything that overflows around it.
Clémentine Deroche
