2019 Catalogue Archive

For over two decades, Callum Innes has explored the expressive potential of color and surface in his Exposed Painting series. To make these works, Innes applies a densely-mixed color to taped-off sections of the canvas. He then carefully brushes turpentine onto the section in an act that washes away – or “unpaints” as the artist describes it – the field of pigment. Deep black sections stand next to these erased areas and act as inert anchors for the whole composition. In this work from 2019, veils of blue and purple run down the canvas, offering a meditation on the passage of time and evidence of Innes’ rhythmic act of adding and subtracting paint. Solo exhibitions of Innes’ work have been held at numerous museums, among them Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; and ICA, London. Public collections include the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, among many others.