'One of the central concerns of Spencer Finch's work is the relationship between color, light, memory, and history. In 2003, he exhibited Eos, for which he traveled to the site of ancient Troy (in modern Turkey) and measured the color and density of the light of dawn using a device called a colorimeter. Using 75 filtered fluorescent lights installed on the ceiling at Postmasters Gallery, he replicated perfectly with the gallery space what is perhaps literature's most famous "rosy-fingered" dawn. Selected by Artforum as one of the standout shows of 2003, Eos was the beginning of a series of works in which Finch has reproduced, using a variety of means, the light of one locale in another.
The current artwork has a particular connection to Cabinet. In July 2003, Finch and Cabinet's editor-in-chief Sina Najafi traveled to Deming, New Mexico, to see for the first time a half acre of scrubland outside Deming that the magazine had bought sight-unseen in January 2003 for its spring issue on "Property." Finch has accepted a commission to produce a special artwork for Cabinet's fundraiser and had proposed a "nightlight," a modified fluorescent light that would represent the moonlight somewhere else in the world. When Finch found out that Cabinet's half-acre was in the seditiously named Luna County, the location for the artwork was determined. This edition's high CRI (Color Resolution Index) fluorescent tube is wrapped with nine color filters of different spectral qualities, ranging from magenta to indigo.' Cabinet Magazine.
The glow of this filtered fluorescent light precisely replicates the light of the full moon over Luna County, New Mexico, on 13 July, 2003.