Chelsea, New York
Spencer Finch
Lux and Lumen
Hill Art FoundationThe Hill Art Foundation is pleased to present Lux and Lumen: Spencer Finch. The exhibition places new and recent works by Spencer Finch in dialogue with a 16th-century stained-glass window by the Renaissance master Valentin Bousch. Lux and Lumen is curated by Spencer Finch. Bousch’s The Creation and the Expulsion from Paradise (1533) was acquired by Tom and Janine Hill in 2018 for the Hill Art Foundation and has undergone extensive conservation under the leadership of conservator Drew Anderson and Timothy Husband, Curator Emeritus, The Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The window was originally one of a series of seven created by Bousch for the Benedictine priory church of Saint-Firmin in Flavigny-sur-Moselle in France's Lorraine region. Two other windows from the cycle are on permanent display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In conceiving this exhibition, Finch worked closely with the conservation team to understand the connections between Bousch’s stained-glass window and his own practice. Its title is inspired by the ideas of Abbot Suger (c. 1081 to 1151), abbot of the cathedral at Saint-Denis and an early patron of Gothic architecture in Europe. Suger believed in the power of stained glass to transform natural light, lux, into sacred light, or lumen. Finch expands on these ideas in relation to the Bousch stained glass and modern secular sites. One such example is the monumental Painting Air, an immersive hanging glass installation that transforms the Foundation’s double-story gallery into a lightscape inspired by Claude Monet’s garden at Giverny. Other major works in the exhibition include Rose Window at Saint-Denis, a fluorescent light-tube installation which recreates the exact color temperature of morning light passing through the North Rose Window at the Cathedral at Saint-Denis in Paris, France. The work, conceived specifically for this show, is a playful exploration of the contemporary relevance of lumen. Another new series created for Lux and Lumen is Studio window, summer (infrared, early morning, late morning, early afternoon, mid-afternoon, late afternoon, early evening, evening, 6/24/22). This sequence of seven oil pastels represents infrared temperature measurements taken from Finch’s studio windows over the course of a day in June 2022. While many of the works in the exhibition engage with reflected or projected light, Studio window is a pure translation of light through color. Also included will be the room-size stained-glass installation CIE 529/418 (candlelight), which shifts the color of sunlight to the color of candlelight inside the gallery. Utilizing yellow, orange, amber, and red stained-glass panels, the work filters the broad spectrum of daylight and reduces it to the much narrower wavelength of candlelight. The title refers to the technical reading of candlelight on the CIE (Committee Internationale d’Eclairage) scale, highlighting the scientific aspects of Finch’s practice. Lux and Lumen: Spencer Finch is an artist-organized exhibition that encourages dialogues between artists and across time periods. The exhibition will be accompanied by an exhibition catalogue with original scholarship by Drew Anderson, Timothy Husband, Jean-Marie Gallais, and Mark Godfrey. This presentation builds on past successful exhibitions at the Hill Art Foundation, and deepens the Foundation’s commitment to the artist’s voice, meaningful juxtapositions, and arts education. Spencer Finch was born in 1962 in New Haven, CT and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, Hamilton College, and Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, and has exhibited extensively in the US and internationally since the early 1990s. Recent major projects include A Cloud Index, a site-specific commission for the new Elizabeth line station at Paddington in London (2022); Orion, permanently installed at the San Francisco Airport, CA (2020); Moon Dust (Apollo 17), Baltimore Museum of Art, MD (2019); Fifteen Stones (Ryoanji), an intervention in the International Pavilion at the Fundació Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona, Spain (2018); Lost Man Creek, his project with the Public Art Fund, Brooklyn, NY (2016-2018); Trying To Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning, a special commission for the 9/11 Memorial, New York, NY (2014); A Certain Slant of Light, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (2014); Peindre la nuit, Centre Pompidou, Metz (2018-2019). Significant solo exhibitions include Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, UT (2018-2019); Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA (2017); Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL (2017); Seattle Museum of Art, WA (2017); Turner Contemporary, Margate, United Kingdom (2014); Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Providence, RI (2012); Art Institute of Chicago, IL (2011); Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA (2011); Emily Dickinson Museum, Amherst, MA (2011); Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2010); Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, France (2010); Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2009) and Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA (2007). Finch was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, the 2008 Turin Triennale and the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009). His work can be found in collections including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Morgan Library, New York, NY; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia; Kemper Museum of Art, St Louis, MO; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, amongst several others.