I came across his work on Rhizome homepage. And I was amazed by what I saw :)
Spencer Finch's installations take form in a variety of different mediums, but he is probably best known for his work with fluorescent lights. In some works, Mr. Finch attempts to recreate the exact color and intensity of light the existed at a specific place and time. For example, Moonlight (Luna County, New Mexico, July 13, 2003), 2003 replicates the exact light of the full moon that shone over the desert of Luna County, NM on the evening of July 13, 2003. source
Excerpts from reviews:
Sensing that our observations must be tied to experience if we are to get at
the truth of something, Finch is compelled continually to expand the scope of
his projects, returning to the same sites at all hours to look again and
again. He traveled to Rouen to visit the cathedral painted by Claude Monet but found
the building closed for renovation. Undeterred, Finch decided to make a series
of paintings depicting the colors of various objects in his hotel room. By
the time he had completed the arduous task of matching 55 colors, the changing
light had altered every one. Thus the work grew into a triptych, a wry blend of
Conceptual and Impressionist methodologies, representing the same set of
colors in the morning, afternoon, and evening. As Finch is fascinated with the
interaction of the physiological and the psychological aspects of perception, the
way our inner world casts a veil over the outer, it makes sense that he would
travel thousands of miles to make a work that explored the tiniest details
of his hotel room. For him vision is an act of projection as much as of
apprehension. . . . Darkness and light. Blindness and insight. Nature and Science.
These dichotomies arise in Finch’s work only to have their usefulness and
validity interrogated. Their too-easy formulas and their promise of an absolute
veracity are not to be trusted. His work for the past decade had consciously
distilled these issues and has grown richer, more potent. Resisting conclusion,
Finch nevertheless aspires to a greater appreciation of the problem. . .
excerpt from Charles LaBelle, Frieze pp. 66-69, May 2003
This means that Finch’s understanding of color theory, in the end, doesn’t
amount to an alternative to formalism or Conceptualism. He is unafraid to
inhabit the paradox that art exists in the play between language and perception.
What many artists and theorists find unbearable, literally, the ‘speaking
against itself’ implied in para-doxa, is for Finch less something to escape than the
very condition necessary for his art practice. That is why his work
demonstrates a Proustian interest in the difficulties and disappointments of
recollection. He knows that color lies at the boundary of what we see and what we
remember. Despite the thick red line of humor that runs through his work, Finch’s
projects are always laced with the acute pathos of someone disappointed by both
perception and language and by their mutual exclusivity and incompatibility.
"There is always a paradox inherent in vision, an impossible desire to see
yourself seeing. A lot of my work probes this tension; to want to see, but not
being able to,” Finch says in a catalogue for a 1997 show at the Wadsworth
Atheneum in Hartford, CT. Color is less a trope of indeterminacy than a way to
re-create an almost visceral experience of our impossible desire to name our
perceptions.
excerpt from Saul Anton, Artforum, pp. 124-127, April 2001
This was a breakthrough exhibition for conceptually minded Spencer Finch,
whose quirky works incorporate science-related themes. Finch’s drawings,
paintings and sculptures were grouped around the theme of ‘up’-- work involving skies,
stars, and jet streams, for instance, but also studies of the water stains on
the artist’s ceiling and an attempt to capture the smell inside a flying
Airbus 340. . . . If Finch’s eyes are on the heavens, his feet are squarely on the
cultural ground in an America of Astroturf, rhinestones, UFO obsessions and
synthetic breakfast drinks. An orange drawing of the Milky Way was composed
entirely of Tang on paper . . .
excerpt from Gregory Volk, Art in America, September 2001
Alas, that all this energy and commitment should result in work that is
virtually viewerproof.
excerpt from Grace Glueck, The New York Observer, October 5, 1992
SOURCE
It was hard to find pictures of what I wanted to put on my blog. But here are some examples of his work.
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