The ƒ/Ø Project is pleased to announce its first project with Spencer Finch. A single ambrotype, Red (Lock of Emily Dickinson's Hair), printed in an edition of 3 with one artist's proof, one printer's proof and one BAT.

 

For Finch's first work with The ƒ/Ø Project a photograph of a lock of Emily Dickinson's hair has been reproduced using the ambrotype technique, which was one of the dominant methods of portrait photography in late nineteenth century America. Dickinson, famously, was only photographed once and Finch used this work as an opportunity to engage in what the writer Susan Cross calls the "romantic impulse to see what others have seen, and to share that impression."

 

Operating within the metonymic field, Finch takes the photographic technique available during Dickinson's historical period and applies it to the artifact that is the closest proxy for her life. But it is a pale substitute. Because photographic materials in the nineteenth century were only sensitive to the blue end of the spectrum, the shock of Dickinson's red hair becomes a muted grey, almost disappearing into the background, making the photograph a metaphor for memory itself.

 

Cross continues "Often Finch is drawn to the idea of experiencing what certain historic figures have envisaged, and he imagines that the light of the sun is perhaps the singular phenomenon that may not have changed over the years. - from The Brain Is Wider Than The Sky.

 

From the James Cohan Gallery: "Spencer Finch combines a poetic sensibility and a scientific approach to gathering data to create installations, sculptures and works on paper that filter perception through the lens of nature, history, literature, and lived experience. ...Finch’s scientific methodology emphasizes rather than discredits the importance of subjectivity; the natural world may be measured, but our individual experiences of it will always diverge... Like Dickinson, Finch is interested in making the abstract tangible and defining experience without confining it, while simultaneously acknowledging the limits of observation and the impossibility of objective memory. Many of the drawings in this show explore the ephemeral and fundamentally ineffable qualities of light and color in the same New England landscape that shaped Dickinson’s elliptical language."

 

Spencer Finch was born in 1962 in New Haven, CT, received a BA in Comparative Literature from Hamilton College Clinton, NY in 1985 and an MFA in Sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design in 1989. His work is critically acclaimed and has been exhibited widely around the world. He is represented by James Cohan Gallery in NY, Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago, Lisson Gallery in London and Galerie Nordenhake in Berlin and Stockholm.

 

Recent major projects include Fifteen Stones (Ryoanji), an intervention in the International Pavilion at the Fundació Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona, Spain (2018); A Cloud Index, a site-specific commission for the new Elizabeth line station at Paddington in London (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); and A Certain Slant of Light, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (2014). His work is currently included in the exhibition Peindre la nuit at Centre Pompidou, Metz. 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; 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. Spencer Finch lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.