Spencer Finch makes art of light at Berggruen

There are words a critic should use advisedly. “Entrancing” might be one. But how else to describe art that, like the most delicate Japanese haiku, creates a mood or sensation with barely a few light gestures?

The art of Spencer Finch is like that. The subject of a substantial exhibition at Berggruen Gallery through May 5, it occupies two floors of the gallery. It is neither a survey of new work nor a considered retrospective; it appears to be simply an incidental accumulation of recent, and some older, work. Yet I left the gallery in a pleasant haze.

Finch is an artist whose work I have adored for nearly two decades. In 2004 I had the opportunity to include a piece—a large but elegantly simple installation—in an exhibition I organized in Cincinnati. That information is shared by way of full disclosure. Yet it also indicates how long the artist has pursued his method, which is the construction of experience, burdened by only minimal regard for the making of objects.