Balboa of House and Garden

Lisson is pleased to present Balboa of House and Garden, Spencer Finch’s first exhibition in Los Angeles and his inaugural presentation with the gallery in the United States. Comprised entirely of new work, the exhibition brings together over fifty unique works on paper, a site-specific skylight installation, and a monumental outdoor sculpture, extending Finch’s longstanding exploration of light, perception, memory, and the emotional resonance embedded within ordinary experience. The presentation at Lisson also coincides with the unveiling of Finch’s site-specific commission at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago this summer.

At the center of the Los Angeles exhibition are Finch’s Gorgeous Nothings, a new series of works on paper inspired by Emily Dickinson’s practice of composing poems on discarded envelopes. Finch meticulously recreates envelopes collected from the street, his personal correspondence, and the junk mail delivered to the studio by hand on archival paper before transforming it through interventions in watercolor, pastel, ink, colored pencil, collage, and other media. Drawing upon the tradition of trompe l’oeil, the works blur distinctions between reproduction and invention, illusion and object, while foregrounding the histories embedded within everyday materials. Installed unframed and affixed directly to the wall with magnets, the drawings project subtly into space in a sprawling, constellation-like arrangement, their folds, shadows, postmarks, handwritten markings, and layered surfaces emphasizing both their sculptural presence and intimate materiality.