Exhibitions 2019: Spencer Finch: Wind (Through Emily Dickinson’s Window)

May 24 - September 5, 2019

Gallery 244
Reception: Thursday, AHA! Night, June 13, 6-8 pm

This exhibition introduces the work by well-known New York City based artist Spencer Finch to New Bedford audiences. His piece Wind (through Emily Dickinson’s window, August 14, 2012, 3:22pm) is a re-creation of a summer breeze blowing through the window in the poet Emily Dickinson's bedroom in Amherst that the artist measured with an anemometer on site.

Spencer Finch’s watercolor drawings are based on videos of falling leaves whose paths he had traced. After the artist made the video recording, he collected leaves from under the tree and matched those colors with the watercolor. He says, “What I especially like about it is that the twists of the watercolor line as it gets thicker and thinner refer to the rotation and movement of the leaf as it descends from the tree.”

Spencer Finch is known to explore these kind of elusive and sensory experiences through his work— from the color of a sunset outside of his motel room to the light in a Turner painting, using both a scientific approach to gathering data and a true poetic sensibility.

Spencer Finch (born 1962, New Haven, Connecticut) has exhibited extensively, both in the US and internationally. He has a BA in comparative literature from Hamilton College and an MFA in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design. Recent major projects include Fifteen Stones (Ryōan-ji), 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).

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. 

This exhibition is a part of inaugural festival run by the DATMA (Design Art Technology Massachusetts), titled Summer Winds 2019 along with the exhibition Elizabeth Keithline: (The Air) As It Moves; University Art Gallery. Multiple partners in New Bedford contribute programs, exhibitions, and educational events to this initiative throughout the summer.