Spencer Finch: No Ordinary Blue

Spencer Finch opens his sixth exhibition with Lisson Gallery, presenting a thematic show focusing on three central preoccupations in his work: subjectivity, gravity and light.

Following the artist’s involvement in recent large-scale public projects – from Trying To Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning (2014) at the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York, to his latest commission, A Cloud Index, suspended above Crossrail’s new Paddington Station (2019) – this intimate exhibition sees Finch return to the studio, presenting a series of new works alongside recent and historic work.

With light and colour as his subject matter, the Brooklyn-based artist creates ethereal, poetic work, recreating his journeys and experiences with the natural world in watercolour, photography, installation, video and drawing. Many of his works delve into a specific time and place in history with the objective of recreating those conditions – from the rising sun in Homer’s Iliad to the passing clouds in Emily Dickinson’s Before I got my eye put out – while others, such as 102 Colors from My Dreams (2002), document the colours he saw in his sleep. Determined to capture the ineffable, elusive experiences of our existence, Finch’s work is at once an impressive technical feat and a magical, delicate snapshot of an elapsed moment.