Spencer Finch

Galerie Nordenhake opens its new space in Mexico City with Botanica the first exhibition in Mexico of US-American multi-media artist Spencer Finch. The exhibition includes a series of new watercolour drawings, photographs, and a light installation conceived explicitly for the gallery space located in Colonia Roma. The exhibition as a whole evinces the extensive exploration of colour and light for which Finch has become well known.

The notion of Botanica evokes not only the store as well as the paradigm of knowledge surrounding the concept of flora but points specifically to the selection of works made by the artist for the exhibition and emerges from his poetic approach to the study of nature and the mining of his own garden. Spencer Finch’s conceptual approach revolves around the perception of everyday light and colour. As Susan Cross pointed out, Finch carefully studies the world around him, while simultaneously striving to understand what might lie beyond it. Whether he is relying on his powers of observation or using a colorimeter, a device that reads the average colour temperature of light, the artist employs a scientific method to achieve poetic ends.

Each of the works on view constitute a precise gesture of reflection on looking at the natural world. More specifically, they explore a direct reference and derive inspiration from artists, poets and philosophers as varied as Claude Monet, Federico Garcia Lorca, Shikibu and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This continues Finch’s long held occupation with and channeling of historical literary and philosophical figures such as Emily Dickinson, Sigmund Freud and Isaac Newton.

Taken as a whole, Spencer Finch’s exhibition, dramatically expands the meaning of Botánica beyond the scientific to encompass ideas both lyrical and imaginative.
— Nordenhake