SPENCER FINCH TO SPEAK AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO

CAFKA is thrilled to be co-hosting, with the University of Waterloo Department of Fine Arts, a lecture by internationally acclaimed artist Spencer Finch.

Spencer Finch has been celebrated for his recreations of naturally occurring colours and formations in gallery spaces. Influenced equally by art, science, and poetry, Finch employs complex analysis and meticulous techniques to transform everyday materials into “very complicated, monochromatic, landscape painting”.

In Sunlight in an Empty Room the artist used rigid plastic sheets and wooden clothespins to create what appears to be a sprawling abstract form floating in the gallery space. Finch refers to this form as an “optical cloud”. The sculpture’s shadow on the floor precisely recreates the shape, spectral quality, and intensity of the shadow of an actual cloud that he encountered in the garden of poet Emily Dickinson.

Spencer Finch, in truly revolutionary fashion, manifests traditional ideas in shockingly new ways, employing scientific method to a poetic end. In a tradition that leads back to the Impressionists working in the late nineteenth century, artists have strived to depict the light surrounding objects, instead of depicting the objects as they are. A contemporary mash-up of Monet’s Water Lilies and Dan Flavin’s fluorescent tubes, Finch’s installations are neither purely pictorial nor conceptual but more like nature itself - beautiful and fascinating.

Thursday, March 4, 7pm
ADMISSION: FREE
Arts Lecture Hall, Room 113, University of Waterloo

For more information contact:
Rob Ring, Artistic Director - rob@cafka.org - 519-744-5123

CAFKA gratefully acknowledges the support of its donors Christie Digital, The Ontario Trillium Foundation, the Musagetes Foundation, the City of Kitchener, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, the Ontario Arts Council and the Kitchener Waterloo Community Foundation.