Still Life with Relief Chalice, Fruit and Glasses In A Stone Niche II

Still Life With Relief Chalice, Fruit and Glasses In A Stone Niche II is a Dutch vanitas painting by Georg Hinz, dating from around 1600. Although it may initially appear like a crystalline Cubist abstraction, William Daniels’s painting is in fact an updated version of Hinz’s. Meticulously reconstructing the traditional still life in tin foil, Daniels translates this 17th century image into alien, scintillating form; he paints the resulting composition from life in all its multifaceted complexity, achieving an astonishing feat of photorealism. In doing so, he makes knowing reference to the dramatic lighting effects and composite arrangements employed by the painters of old to demonstrate their skill. ‘I like the value aspect of still lifes,’ says Daniels. ‘Still Life With Relief Chalice, Fruit and Glasses In A Stone Niche II looks like an expensive gold set up but is just silver foil. I think of it as an extension of the vanitas genre. It’s primarily about light – the colour is just coming from the reflections. Painting by its nature is just painting light, or perceptions of light falling on objects. In my work I try to take it a step further; they’re like “non-paintings”. It’s more about the perception of them, another layer of language.’