Spencer Finch: Balboa of House and Garden

Spencer Finch’s Balboa of House and Garden marks the artist’s first Los Angeles exhibition and his inaugural presentation with Lisson in the United States. Spanning nearly sixty works on paper, a site-specific skylight installation, and a monumental outdoor sculpture, the exhibition reflects Finch’s longstanding interest in how perception can shift the meaning of even the most familiar objects and spaces. Central to the exhibition is a series of unique works on paper derived from found and received envelopes, meticulously reproduced on archival paper and further transformed through interventions in gouache, collage, pencil, ink, and other media. Inspired by Emily Dickinson’s practice of composing poems on discarded envelopes, the works transform ephemeral materials into sites of reflection and invention. Installed unframed across the gallery walls with rhythmic symmetry and held in place by magnets, the pieces hover between drawing and sculpture; their creases, postmarks, handwritten marks, and layered surfaces become records of both intimacy and circulation. Throughout the exhibition, Finch extends this sensitivity to atmosphere and transformation. Colored filters installed across the gallery’s skylights mimic the effect of stained glass, casting shifting chromatic environments that evolve throughout the day, while Wreck (Raft of the Medusa) (2026) — a found dumpster reimagined as monumental sculpture — brings histories of ruin, survival, and urban detritus into dialogue with the traditions of Romantic painting and the readymade. Across each body of work, Finch locates moments of wonder within the overlooked, inviting viewers to reconsider the quiet emotional and perceptual charge embedded within everyday life.