It would be easy for me to write a review of Spencer Finch’s Light, Time, Chemistry by focusing on the chemistry. Easy, yes, to discuss Shadow, Sculpture of Centaur, Tuileries (after Atget) (2007) as the obvious representation of Sir Isaac Newton’s electromagnetic spectrum on a fluorescent lamp, or to mention the speculated chemical traces on the sheet of paper exposed to the molecules of Emily Dickinson’s garden air, or to talk about the simply titled collection of ten photographs, Ag (2008) as his own sort of elemental analysis of the precious metal using silver gelatin prints. But I didn’t come here for “easy”.
The gallery district in the West Loop of Chicago where the Rhona Hoffman Gallery sits doesn’t fit my stereotype of an artsy scene. I couldn’t immediately picture the socialites zipping about in their sporty BMWs, buzzing themselves into their lofts kitty-corner from a meat packing plant and a Mexican grocer’s warehouse, but I quickly warmed to the idea of pairing art, luxury, and factory. The first piece, Periscope (sky over Chicago, 3/26/09—3/27/09) (2009), an indoor/outdoor installation, blended right into the naked brick and metal of the streetscape. It wasn’t until I saw the indoor component that I noticed it connecting outside through the storefront of the gallery. A large ventilation duct, opening upwards towards the sky just above the entrance to the building snaked through the window and ended just in front of a white wall in the lower level. Peering outside from inside was now easier than walking all the way to the window; looking up into the cold metal tube showed a tiny frame of the cheery blue sky thanks to some well placed mirrors. The cyanotype exposure on the facing white wall interpreted the light which entered the gallery through the pipe as streaks of blue, not unlike the color seen through the ventilation duct, but very much unlike the texture. Somewhere in between the sky and the cyanotype an error had occurred: like that mischievous “purple monkey dishwasher” kid playing telephone at day camp, some part of the system had failed to render the perfect image of the Chicago sky! Was this a misinterpretation of the photo-sensitive paper on the wall, or an error on the part of the ventilation duct? It was here that my mind first turned back to chemistry.
Perception is a tricky little thing. Many of Finch’s works seemed to circle around this concept, most overtly of all Periscope. Where chemists build large metallic machines to look at sub-microscopic atoms, Finch builds a tube to see the sky. (Yes, I said it would be too easy to revert to chemistry, but it’s unavoidable…and perhaps inevitable.) Chemistry constantly struggles with how to perceive a world we know is around us but cannot detect with just the five senses. And so chemists invent microscopes and spectroscopes and gadgets to enhance our eyes and ears, but we are still not limitless. Finch points out our limitations on the macroscopic scale. Periscope offers not only the instrumentation; it also treats the viewer to the sun-stained cyanotype as the best effort of his bulky creation.
He further explores this concept with Thank You, Fog (2009), a photographic piece in 60 frames, each taken 60 seconds after the previous one and arranged in a line around the four walls of the upper gallery. The images overlooking a small patch of pine trees are only decipherable from a close distance; a thick fog provides a low resolution, variable from frame to frame. And thus we get a temporal picture of the problem of interpretation: clarity is not a constant. The press release states that this piece explores fog as it “both reveals and conceals, frustrating our desire to capture an accurate image”, hinting that the title of the piece may contain a hint of sarcasm. But were the viewer sitting next to Finch in Sonoma as he snapped those photographs, I suspect she would have seen much the same thing as the film shows: vague suggestions of trees underneath a blanket of soft gray. The frustration may exist, but it is not directed at a desire to capture an “accurate image”, it is a frustration at the inability to capture the non-existent image we desire. Thank You, Fog could not be exhibited in a more appropriate place; large wooden structural supports of the building interrupt the emptiness of the room, teasing viewers as they obstruct and reveal that idealized forest image so hungered for. The interference of the fog allows the viewer to project onto each image her own forest, complete with pinecones and that fresh, green scent. If Schroedinger’s cat is still in the box, it is simultaneously alive and dead. It is the act of observation which determines the outcome. And so the gratitude expressed in the title Thank You, Fog may actually be sincere.
Light, Time, Chemistry delivers what it promises, but not completely in the traditional form. He swerves around the kitsch of presenting the obvious graphs and charts, instead favoring the meaty idea at the heart of all science: perception. Finch lays out a nice collection, using his tools as best he can to explore perception in his spatial language. I could discuss a connection to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, wherein Heisenberg proves that a full knowledge of space and time cannot simultaneously exist, and the choice to understand one means knowing nothing of the other.
But that would be too easy.
Spencer Finch’s Light, Time, Chemistry is showing at the Rhona Hoffman Gallery (118 N. Peoria St, Chicago) from March 27 – May 2, 2009.
