Spencer Finch - 'The Opposite of Blindness'

As part of our London gallery trawl, Ed and  went to see Spencer Finch's show 'The Opposite of Blindness' at the Lisson Gallery. I did not know anything about this work beforehand accept that Ed had looked into his work because he works with colour. I read the statement on the hand out and was really intrigued. It certainly sounds like my kind of thing...

"His subjects are the ineffable and evanescent: the human condition of remembering or the quality of light at a given moment – all lending to a full comprehension of nature in spite of man’s technological advancement. In the impossibility of their undertaking, his endeavours are frequently Sisyphean, matching a Herculean task with a touch that is deliberately slight and human, with the ultimate aim of igniting wonder."

Light and blindness and vision and slight touches - it sounds like the perfect exhibition for me.

Igniting wonder - that's what I want my work to do and that's what I want artwork to do for me. However, looking at the work, I just didn't get that.

Finch's still life series, where the colour of tulips was logged at different times of the day, just as much of the work, was pleasing to look at but didn't provoke wonder. Maybe this is because they are paintings, although I hope I am not that disengaged by 2D work, or perhaps it is because it is an idea I am quite familiar with. My Blue Marlble project of last year, logging the colour of my house each day and seeing how the colour differed, explored the same idea.

The more interesting thing about Finch's work to me was probably that they were described as still lives, and indeed they were still...but still ever changing. Is light ever still? Lightness and darkness...are they ever the same from one moment to the next. This regard for vision was the success of the exhibition for me. Another work, which I didn't find that visually interesting but was intrigued by how it reconfigured perception of image, was titled 'Sunflower (Bee's View)'.

Ultimately, I thought the work was pretty but not poetic. I suppose, instead of being melancholic about sight and blindness like my work, Finch's approach seemed more of a celebration.