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Spencer Finch — Study for Separating Light From Darkness (Sunrise, Gas Station in Monument Valley, January 28, 2007)
Spencer Finch

Study for Separating Light From Darkness (Sunrise, Gas Station in Monument Valley, January 28, 2007)

2025

A column of suffused amber and rose light emanates from this slender LED fixture, its color calibrated with scientific precision to match the exact quality of a desert sunrise witnessed by Spencer Finch at a gas station in Monument Valley on January 28, 2007. Working from firsthand observation and meticulous color research, Finch translated the specific spectral character of that moment into a sequence of filters that transforms an ordinary lamp into an act of preservation. The result stands at once as a perceptual document and a meditative object, collapsing the distance between a particular morning in the Arizona desert nearly two decades ago and the present space of the viewer. Finch has long occupied a singular position in contemporary art, treating light, color, and atmosphere as subjects worthy of the same rigor brought to scientific measurement and the same tenderness brought to personal memory. This work belongs to his ongoing inquiry into perception itself, raising questions about how color carries experience and whether a sensation, so fleeting and subjective, can truly be fixed and transmitted across time. The title, with its precise coordinates of place and date, functions almost as field notation, grounding an evanescent natural phenomenon in the specificity of lived observation. For collectors, the work offers something rare: an object that is simultaneously minimal in form and expansive in implication. Its elegant proportions, measuring just over four feet in length, allow it to be sited with discretion while commanding quiet authority in any space. Signed by the artist and presented by Galerie Nordenhake, this 2025 piece extends a body of work that has entered major institutional collections worldwide, affirming Finch's sustained relevance to conversations about perception, landscape, and the poetic limits of representation.

Medium
Filters, LED lamp and fixture
Overall
Signed
Yes

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About this work

Spencer Finch, Study for Separating Light From Darkness (Sunrise, Gas Station in Monument Valley, January 28, 2007), 2025

A column of suffused amber and rose light emanates from this slender LED fixture, its color calibrated with scientific precision to match the exact quality of a desert sunrise witnessed by Spencer Finch at a gas station in Monument Valley on January 28, 2007. Working from firsthand observation and meticulous color research, Finch translated the specific spectral character of that moment into a sequence of filters that transforms an ordinary lamp into an act of preservation. The result stands at once as a perceptual document and a meditative object, collapsing the distance between a particular morning in the Arizona desert nearly two decades ago and the present space of the viewer. Finch has long occupied a singular position in contemporary art, treating light, color, and atmosphere as subjects worthy of the same rigor brought to scientific measurement and the same tenderness brought to personal memory. This work belongs to his ongoing inquiry into perception itself, raising questions about how color carries experience and whether a sensation, so fleeting and subjective, can truly be fixed and transmitted across time. The title, with its precise coordinates of place and date, functions almost as field notation, grounding an evanescent natural phenomenon in the specificity of lived observation. For collectors, the work offers something rare: an object that is simultaneously minimal in form and expansive in implication. Its elegant proportions, measuring just over four feet in length, allow it to be sited with discretion while commanding quiet authority in any space. Signed by the artist and presented by Galerie Nordenhake, this 2025 piece extends a body of work that has entered major institutional collections worldwide, affirming Finch's sustained relevance to conversations about perception, landscape, and the poetic limits of representation.

Medium
Filters, LED lamp and fixture
Dimensions
overall: 121.9 x 5.1 cm
Year
2025
Signed
Hand-signed by the artist
Seen at
Galerie Nordenhake

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Collected by

Gavin Kennedy