![]() The undulating watercolour bands reference Brice Marden's recent paintings, which have been read as abstractions of natural phenomena. Forecast of Jet Stream over North America (10.5 Days Ahead), meanwhile, works differently. Playing spectator, the artist has pre-empted the latter's impulse to name an abstract shape, which of course is not abstract at all, but a copy of a leak mark. The drawings match each other as much as the process permits, but each is orientated differently by 90 degrees and accompanied by a text - 'map of Cuba', 'kitty w'penis', 'dancing bear', 'flying dragon'. Water Stain over My Bed (4 Views) consists of four pencil drawings, which are coloured in with brown watercolour. Nonetheless, Finch is interested in the way viewers structure experiences around the old abstraction/representation duality. If the piece obscured a simple view of representation, it illuminated the fact that traditional ways of thinking about representation as resemblance are now obsolete. At the same time, it was utterly removed from its referent - spectators breathing the (comparatively) safe New York air, were looking at a mobile of white bulbs lighting a gallery space in Chelsea. Though a subjective rendering (Finch's blue would be described differently by someone else), as a representation of a pigment to match his blue, the work was scientifically accurate. By combining the three chemicals, a pigment could be made to match the colour of the polluted sky Finch witnessed at this former nuclear test site. Titled Blue (Sky over Los Alamos, New Mexico, 5/5/00, Morning Effect), it included one unit of ultramarine, 19 of titanium oxide and ten of cobalt. In the second room another ceiling construction consisted of light bulbs joined to each other in structures replicating chemical bonds. As you become aware of the absurdity of this wait, the work prompts a more general self-consciousness about what it is to gaze at art objects, awaiting epiphanies.įinch's concern with reference, representation and spectatorship was in evidence throughout this show. ![]() As you look up, you feel the tantalizing sensation of not quite knowing when the apple will drop. The admirable economy of the work enables these allusions to be invoked simultaneously, but its greatest achievement is how it structures the viewer's experience. ![]() While the title also recalls the 'compositions' of 1920s abstraction, the tradition of still life (particularly Cézanne's paintings of similarly hued fruit) is also alluded to, and disrupted. There were just enough apples in the tube to last the day.Ĭomposition in Red and Green (all works 2000) is at once a demonstration and a representation of gravity, combining references to the Newton story, to sculptural investigations of it (such as Barry Le Va's scatter pieces) and (more obliquely) to the biblical Fall. Every five minutes a bar released the apple at the front of the line so it dropped onto the green astroturf square below and bounced off in a random direction. Every morning he filled it with a line of fresh apples. For Finch art can do more it can ‘ignite our capacity for wonder’.” Excerpt from Susan Cross, What Time Is It On The Sun pp.Above the centre of the first of two rooms in the gallery Spencer Finch rigged a long, narrow, open-topped tube, which tilted gently down from the ceiling. Like the ancientpractitioners of the hermetic arts, who saw changes as the most fundamental truth of the universe, the artist doesn’talways provide an answer in his investigations. In Finch’s universe if you wait a few hours, the sun mayvery well change a leaden hue into gold. Instead, his dogged method reinforces the fleeting, temporal nature ofthe observed world, illustrating his own version of a theory of Whether he is relying on his own powers of observation or using a colorimeter,a device that reads the average color and temperature of light,the artist employs a scientific method to achieve poetic ends.Contrary to what one might expect, Finch’s efforts towardaccuracy – the precise measurements he takes under different conditions and at different times of day – resist, in the end, a definitive result or single empirical truth about his subject. “Finch carefully records the invisible world, while simultaneouslystriving to understand what might lie beyond it. “This edition was inspired by my recent project on the High Line.It was developed in conjunction with the Brodsky Center forInnovative Editions in a process through which color pigments areinfused in each unique handmade piece during the paper-making ![]() Spencer Finch, The River That Flows Both Ways (Hudson River, June 12,2008 Early Morning Effect 9:20 am, Late Morning Effect 11:29 am,Noon Effect 12:10 pm, Afternoon Effect 3:54 pm, Evening Effect1:08 pm), 2011, 5 works at 18” x 24”. ![]()
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