Spencer Finch »In Praise of Shadows«

Finch’s exhibition can be seen as a small visual anthology of shadows. A drawing from 1995 will be exhibited alongside new watercolours, photographs, light installations, and smaller experimental installations that explore the diverse aspects of shadows.  One of the narrow walls alongside the large gallery window is painted in a monochrome grey colour, transporting the viewer to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s house in Weimar. The grey is an accurate chromatic replica of the colour of the shadow cast on a November day in the house where Goethe wrote his “Theory of Colour“ (1810), and where he most likely performed his experiments on coloured shadows. Goethe defined colour as the result of a dynamic interplay between light and darkness. Although Goethe’s theory was rejected in favour of Newton’s purely physical explanation, Goethe’s observations laid the groundwork for colour psychology. 
A sequence of 12 photographs captures the transient shadows cast by a lemon tree over the course of a day. The artist travelled to Spain and took the photos at equal intervals from dawn till dusk to record the revolution of the sun around the tree. The work is inspired by a poem about a barren orange tree, written by Federico García Lorca, which adds a melancholic tone to the delicate photographic renderings and points to the long tradition of ascribing shadows deeper psychological meanings. Lorca’s orange tree invokes a woodcutter to cut away his shadow because it can’t stand the torment of seeing itself in its fruitless silhouette. 

Eugène Atget, master of the photographic conservation of old Paris, is honoured in a light installation in the second room of the gallery. Finch uses colour filters and fluorescent lights to re-create the exact darkness of the shadows cast in the Parisian alleyways that were photographed by Atget around 100 years ago. 
What remains constant in Finch’s work is that he merges dry, scientific methods of measurement and documentation with his subjective creative expression, here demonstrating that shadows are far more than regions of darkness where light is blocked. Rather, they are optical shapes that beckon towards a subjective sublime, reflecting the human condition of never being able to completely know what exists in nature, waiting in the shadows for a stroke of lightning.