Painting Air
Introduction
The work of Impressionist painter Claude Monet serves as the aesthetic touchstone for both parts of Spencer Finch’s exhibition (in this room and in the large adjoining gallery). “I want to paint the air,” Monet said in 1895, “and that is nothing short of impossible.” Like Monet, Finch challenges himself to capture phenomena and experiences that are fleeting or intangible. His artwork over the past twenty years has taken many different forms - including sculpture, installation, watercolor, drawing, photography, and video - depending on which medium and method seem best suited to convey his fascination with light, color, and atmosphere.
The wide range of objects featured in this gallery has been chosen by Finch from the Museum’s storage areas (with a few exceptions)-starting with Monet’s 1874 painting The Basin at Argenteuil, which Finch copied in 1988, when he was a graduate student at RISD. His study of this light-filled composition proved to be a turning point that set him on the trajectory he has followed to this day. Other works, arranged in thematic groupings or “episodes” and pairings reveal links or contrasts between artists, unexpected visual connections among disparate works, and Finch’s personal sensibility as well as characteristics of the Museum’s collections. The invitation to Finch to curate an exhibition highlighting works in storage has its roots in Andy Warhol’s Raid the Icebox 1, the seminal project mounted at the RISD Museum in 1970.
New and recent work created by Finch is featured in the adjoining gallery. A large installation, also titled Painting Air, was inspired by his visit to Monet’s studio and water garden in Giverny, France. Monet’s pond functions for both artists as a laboratory where they merge the experience of nature with the artmaking process. In another installation, Bee Purple, Finch attempts to make visible to us a color that honeybees can see but which is undetectable to the human eye. In Sky (Over Franz Joseph Glacier. . .) ice melts into a pool of water that exactly matches the color of the sky over a New Zealand glacier Finch visited in 2008. Combining scientific analysis with poetic observation, Finch brings new awareness to our encounters with light and color and to the objects we collect, encounter, and live with.
Spencer Finch was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1962. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Judith Tannenbaum
