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What Time Is It On the Sun?
Jan. 10th, 2008 10:31 pmWhat Time Is It On the Sun?, the exhibition of work by Spencer Finch currently at MASS MoCA, was the best art experience that I've had in a very long time. I knew nothing about Spencer Finch before seeing the exhibit; I went just because MASS MoCA is perhaps my favorite museum, and a visit there has become something of a post-Christmas tradition in my family. As soon as I walked in I was enchanted by a cloud of light bulbs that stretched and spread above me. The bulbs were of varying sizes and they hung from the ceiling in constellations. The work was surprising and beautiful, and my immediate reaction was one of involuntary delight. I learned from the exhibition guide that this work (called Night Sky (Over the Painted Desert, Arizona, January 11, 2004) came about after Finch observed the sky and mixed a number of paints to match the exact color he saw. He then calculated the molecular ratio of each color in the combination, and constructed the installation such that each light bulb represents a single atom in the molecular structure of the pigment he created.
All of the works in the show are like this: attempts to use scientific methods and scientific precision to capture and represent the ephemeral. Finch specializes in all that is fleeting about our sensory perceptions. His work presents a certain quality of light, a particular breeze, the remembered colors of his dreams. I was fascinated by the explanations in the exhibition guide and by the notion that all of these seemingly abstract pieces were actually representational. To look at a piece like Abecedary, Finch's gigantic canvas covered with a random, even spattering of colored dots, and to know that it is based on both Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and Nabokov's synesthetic perception of the alphabet is to have a ready answer to the questions of meaning that come with abstract art. But the funny thing was that having these answers made me wonder how necessary they really are.
This is a piece called CIE 529/418 (Candlelight), in which the stained glass panes on the windows filter the light in the gallery to produce light the exact color of candlelight. It was beautiful. The photograph doesn't half do it justice. There was a wonderful moment in this gallery when, somewhere in the invisible sky, the sun came out from behind a cloud and the already-warm light in the room brightened and warmed noticeably. There were seven or eight people the room when it happened, and every one of us exhaled in surprise and enjoyment. In a moment of pure pleasure like that, pure visual delight, does it matter that the light in the room has been measured by a colorimeter and determined to be exactly the same color as the light eight inches away from a candle's flame, or does it simply matter that the light is lovely? I don't know the answer to that. To transform something as huge and powerful as the sun into something as intimate as candlelight is an amazing undertaking.
What about Eos (Dawn, Troy, 10/27/02)? This is a frieze-like installation of neon tubes, striped with shades of blue, indigo, and yellow, and arranged with a sense of motion that almost rivals Broadway Boogie Woogie. Does it matter that it also, as the title suggests, creates light that precisely matches the color and intensity of dawn light in Troy? Does the work say more to us if we know that? Something about memory, perhaps, or perception, or attempts to pin down the ineffable? Obviously this layer of scientific precision is a necessary part of the process for Finch, and I'll never know why he needs instruments and measurements and calibration in order to produce beautiful things. I'll also never be able to separate my aesthetic response to his work from my knowledge of what the work represents, so I can't determine how much that knowledge contributed to my engagement with the exhibit.
Avalanche (K2, 1978)
Some of the work is beautiful; all of it is fascinating and surprising and provocative. If you will be anywhere near western Massachusetts this spring, go see it.
All of the works in the show are like this: attempts to use scientific methods and scientific precision to capture and represent the ephemeral. Finch specializes in all that is fleeting about our sensory perceptions. His work presents a certain quality of light, a particular breeze, the remembered colors of his dreams. I was fascinated by the explanations in the exhibition guide and by the notion that all of these seemingly abstract pieces were actually representational. To look at a piece like Abecedary, Finch's gigantic canvas covered with a random, even spattering of colored dots, and to know that it is based on both Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and Nabokov's synesthetic perception of the alphabet is to have a ready answer to the questions of meaning that come with abstract art. But the funny thing was that having these answers made me wonder how necessary they really are.
This is a piece called CIE 529/418 (Candlelight), in which the stained glass panes on the windows filter the light in the gallery to produce light the exact color of candlelight. It was beautiful. The photograph doesn't half do it justice. There was a wonderful moment in this gallery when, somewhere in the invisible sky, the sun came out from behind a cloud and the already-warm light in the room brightened and warmed noticeably. There were seven or eight people the room when it happened, and every one of us exhaled in surprise and enjoyment. In a moment of pure pleasure like that, pure visual delight, does it matter that the light in the room has been measured by a colorimeter and determined to be exactly the same color as the light eight inches away from a candle's flame, or does it simply matter that the light is lovely? I don't know the answer to that. To transform something as huge and powerful as the sun into something as intimate as candlelight is an amazing undertaking.
What about Eos (Dawn, Troy, 10/27/02)? This is a frieze-like installation of neon tubes, striped with shades of blue, indigo, and yellow, and arranged with a sense of motion that almost rivals Broadway Boogie Woogie. Does it matter that it also, as the title suggests, creates light that precisely matches the color and intensity of dawn light in Troy? Does the work say more to us if we know that? Something about memory, perhaps, or perception, or attempts to pin down the ineffable? Obviously this layer of scientific precision is a necessary part of the process for Finch, and I'll never know why he needs instruments and measurements and calibration in order to produce beautiful things. I'll also never be able to separate my aesthetic response to his work from my knowledge of what the work represents, so I can't determine how much that knowledge contributed to my engagement with the exhibit.
Avalanche (K2, 1978)
Some of the work is beautiful; all of it is fascinating and surprising and provocative. If you will be anywhere near western Massachusetts this spring, go see it.
