Titled after James Joyce’s novel, whose events unfold over the course of a single day, Spencer Finch’s Study for Ulysses (Brooklyn Public Library) chronicles the artist’s visit to the Brooklyn...
Titled after James Joyce’s novel, whose events unfold over the course of a single day, Spencer Finch’s Study for Ulysses (Brooklyn Public Library) chronicles the artist’s visit to the Brooklyn Library, recorded as a series of fleeting color notes. This Study displays Pantone chips from one portion of a larger work, Ulysses (September 19), 2014, in which the artist recorded an entire day’s journey around Brooklyn, Finch's home borough standing in for Leopold Bloom’s Dublin. As he wandered, Finch “sampled” colors from his environment using the commercial color-matching system Pantone. Finch's art explores the limits of perception and reproduction. Seemingly precise and yet quixotic in his approach, Finch sets for himself impossible challenges of representation, working to capture ephemeral, sensory experiences, often through humble means. Taken as a whole, these fragments of the day constitute a chromatic stream of consciousness.