ART CITIES:London-Spencer Finch

Spencer Finch is best known for light installations that visualise his experience of natural phenomena. His investigations into the nature of light, color, memory and perception manifest in watercolors, drawings, video and photographs. Compelled by what he describes as “the impossible desire to see oneself seeing”, Finch holds up an enchanting prism between the outer world and inner thought. He distills his observations of the world into glowing abstract colou but also diverts them through cultural and historical filters.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Lisson Gallery Archive

Spencer Finch’s solo exhibition “No Ordinary Blue” focuses on three central preoccupations in his work: subjectivity, gravity and light, presenting a series of new works alongside recent and historic work. The first room in the Lisson Gallery is dedicated to Finch’s diptychs which explore subjectivity, variation and change  (multiplicity). The exhibition includes new and recent work including “Passing Cloud (Studio Table)” (2018), “Color Test-111” (2019), “Blue-Violet” (2019) and “As Blind Men Learn the sun (passing cloud)” (2018), alongside previous works such as “Rainbow (Dunedin)” (2008), a recording of two sites where Finch determined the arc of a rainbow had begun and ended. Articulating both the lingering awe of the natural phenomenon and its transitory nature, Finch captures how fleeting the optical event is, like color, time, memory, and life itself. Hung at a distance from each other, Finch leaves the viewer to fill in the missing colors and complete their own rainbow. This room also features “2,562,451.2 Km 4/13/08, 4pm/ 4/14/08 4pm” (2008), a pair of archival inkjet prints taken exactly one day apart, documenting the barely perceptible shifts in the shadows on the artist’s studio wall created by the light streaming in through the window. The subtle changes recorded in the photos trace an astronomical change in the earth’s position as it orbits the sun: the title referring to the precise distance that the earth travelled in the 24-hour period between the photographs. In the second room, under the theme of gravity, Finch presents works such as his “Falling Leaves” series, tracing the paths of leaves and matching their colors. While these works embody Finch’s scientific methodology, patiently and systematically investigating these phenomena, they also remind us of the romance of Finch’s practice; Finch’s devotion to the documentation of his surroundings reflects a deep appreciation. Two of the works exhibited in this room, including “Falling Leaf” (2019) and the installation “Falling Cherry Blossoms” (2019), and are rendered in watercolor on folded paper that, when unravelled, create the illusion of the gentle tumbling leaf or multiple cherry blossoms falling from the tree. Continuing the impulse to bring the outside in, light is the focus of the upstairs gallery. Finch’s fascination with light belongs to a long tradition: the sun has occupied the minds of scientists, philosophers, writers and artists since the dawn of human history, exploring optics and perception, as well as the connection to knowledge and religion. The exhibition feature works such as “After Image of the sun (Winter sunset)” and “Sunset (after Monet)” (both 2019), an homage to Claude Monet who Finch referred to as creating “an experimental laboratory for certain optical effects”. Many of the works in the exhibition try to capture the ever-changing experience of light as filtered through colors that Monet himself experienced and painted, creating an Impressionist painting for the twenty-first century.

Info: Lisson Gallery, 67 Lisson Street, London, Duration: 14/3-4/5/19, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-17:00, www.lissongallery.com