Spencer Finch

I don't see a lot of choices. To make work about God in this day and age would be chicanery. So for me the sun is the next best thing. As Turner said on his deathbed, "The sun is God!"

Spencer Finch

This is a piece that has a lot of different aspects going on. It is at one time a monochrome painting; at another time it's a landscape painting of a sunset; and it's also a work of art that's edible. All of these things sort of come together. It started out being a work about the sun. I wanted to do something that used not just the image of the sun, but the actual materiality of the sun. And the only real materiality that we have access to is the energy of the sun. So that's how I came to using solar power as an integral aspect of the sculpture itself. Then I thought, "Well, if it's a solar power piece about the sun, what does it make sense to make with that raw material, the energy of the sun?" It seemed logical that it would be something that references the sun itself. I wanted something that is actually a picture of the sun. And rather than using solar power to create a painting, I decided to use solar power to create a color of ice cream. That's basically the conceptual structure of the work.

Spencer Finch

Everyone loves pictures of a sunset. It's a cliché, of course, but it's also a beautiful thing. I think it's a subject for painters through the years for a reason: it is sort of an extraordinary natural phenomenon. I'm not particularly interested in making an actual painting on canvas of the sunset, but I am interested in something that references that history and maybe doesn't take itself too seriously—and tastes good.

Spencer Finch

This is my second project with solar panels, and there's another that I'm working on, so there are three. It's fun working with them. For a long time I've been interested in the sun as subject matter, as a source of wonder, and as something that's sort of important in our world and our understanding of the world. It's impossible to make a picture of the sun. It's so bright, you know, you can't make a picture of it. Using the sun to make a picture of itself—this is about as close as I can get to that. You just can't do it. The Hudson River School painters tried to do it. There's a great Frederic Church painting where he does it with sort of white and a yellow halo. And, of course, Turner did it. But it's still an attempt, And all you can do with attempts is try to get closer each time. I guess that's what I'm trying to do.

Spencer Finch

Yeah, that's a sun-based work as well. There's a long history of interest and obsession in the sun. It is endlessly fascinating to some people, including myself.

The one thing that's a little odd in the scientific literature about the universe is that there's not so much about the sun. There's much more about the moon and the different planets. Even though the sun is so important, we still don't know a lot about it. There's still a lot of mystery to it even though it is what keeps us alive.

Spencer Finch

There was a time when science and art were not such different fields of study. The nineteenth century was full of people who did both. The speculative impulse can be adapted to either form of knowledge. Unfortunately, we are now so specialized that it is very difficult to be a serious practitioner in more than one field. I don't understand quantum mechanics very well, but I do appreciate the incredible beauty and poetry of modern physics.

Spencer Finch

Well, I would like it to be the flavor of a madeleine dipped in tea, but that would require greater culinary skill than I have at my disposal. However, I'm hesitant to deal with the flavor. I'm worried that it will complicate things in an unnecessary way.

Spencer Finch

In the past I have made applesauce and vodka, both in collaboration with Paul Ramirez Jonas. The vodka was titled Enemies of Promise.

Spencer Finch

Yes, I have been working with ice and I have been working with the sun. They are both interesting natural materials and the hot-cold dichotomy is interesting to me. So we'll see what happens.

Spencer Finch

We always experience ice cream as abstract. I mean, maybe not totally abstract: pistachio relates to the pistachio nut, which is actually a sort of acidic green color, and chocolate relates to the color of chocolate, which is brown. But what interests me, in terms of the viewer's experience of the ice cream, is the object being not materially based but representational. To make an ice cream cone that is representational of something else, that's a picture, I guess is what I am interested in. Also, I'm interested that it is a record of a particular moment. The ice cream becomes, in some ways, not only a monochrome painting and a landscape painting, but also a historical painting in that it is also about summer and a memory of summer which will be waning as the exhibition goes on.

Spencer Finch

Well, if you eat quickly, it's not melancholic! (BURP!)