COPENHAGEN.- OSL contemporary is presenting a solo booth by Oslo-based Scottish artist Callum Innes, showcasing a series of new watercolours and oil paintings at Enter Art Fair 2023 in Copenhagen.

Callum Innes (b.1962) is among the most significant abstract painters of his generation. His paintings are highly disciplined but also uncertain spaces, combining the controlled authority of monochrome geometric forms with ever-present traces of fluidity and an always-apparent tendency towards formal dissolution. Central to his distinctive artistic process is a dual activ- ity of painting and ‘unpainting’. Innes begins by applying densely mixed dark pigment onto a prepared canvas before then brushing the wet surface with turpentine: strategically stripping away sections of the painted space before it has entirely settled and solidified.

In ongoing series such as his ‘Exposed Paintings’, solid square blocks of deep, complex black are accompanied by lighter zones of varying, more transparent colour – from dioxazine violet to cobalt blue to quinacridone gold yellow – each separated section being the contingent outcome of Innes’s methodical erasure of the painting’s primary material substance.

Watercolour has been an integral part of Innes’s practice for several decades, and the artist cites its luminosity as the reason he continually returns to the medium. Innes eschews the looseness and quickness often inherent to watercolour, instead relying on his methodic style of painting to explore the possibilities of colour and form. As is common for the artist, these works possess a harmony between simplicity and complexity, as well as control and chance.

In creating the watercolours, Innes delineates a rectangular area on white paper and applies a single colour using a wide brush. As that dries, he adds a second colour over the first, then begins a process of removing and applying pigment from the composition. The resulting work is largely monochromatic, yet there are subtle gradations between the hues and remnants of the artist’s brushstrokes. Bold, off-register edges reveal the original two colours Innes used and offer a glimpse into the transformation as pigment was added and subtracted.

When viewed collectively, the variations in combinations highlight the complexity and depth of exploration within the series. The delicate subtleties possible with this medium, such as bleeding edges and veiled colours, invite intimate viewing, and the artist’s rigorous study of light and colour is particularly powerful when experienced en masse.

Recent solo exhibitions include: a pure land, at OSL contemporary and i8 Gallery (2021); In Position, Château La Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, (2018); Callum Innes, OSL contemporary (2018); I’ll Close My Eyes, De Pont Museum, Tilburg, (2016); Callum Innes, Malerei-als-Prozess, Neues Museum, Nurnburg (2013); Callum Innes, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, (2013); From Memory, a major touring exhibition visiting Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; Modern Art Oxford, Oxford; Kettle’s Yard; Cambridge; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, (all 2007– 2008); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, (1999); Kunsthalle Bern (1999); ICA, London, (1992) and The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, (1992).

Innes’ work is represented in the collections of Albright-Knox, Buffalo; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; Museé des Beaux Arts, Lausanne; National Galleries of Australia, Canberra; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York and TATE Gallery, London.

Please come find us at Booth 32 at Enter Art Fair at their new location, Lokomotivværkstedet, Otto Busses Vej 5A, 2450 Copenhagen.

Copenhagen
OSL contemporary at Enter Art Fair 2023
August 24th, 2023 - August 27th, 2023