Callum Innes s known for luminous abstractions that push at the fundamentals of painting: pigment, surface and space. Composed of opaque sections juxtaposed with thin, translucent washes that appear almost permeable, his paintings invoke a dynamic conversation between presence and absence. Through this unique, spare vocabulary, Innes achieves a vast range of atmospheres and effects.
Callum Innes (b.1962, Edinburgh, Scotland) studied at Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen and Edinburgh College of Art. Innes creates abstract paintings that carry a powerful tension between control and fluidity. Dissolution is central to his practice: layers of deep pigments are brushed over with turpentine, breaking down sections of paint and leaving watery, trace elements, before being painted over again. Repeating this process of painting, dissolving and repainting multiple times, Innes builds depth and a sense of history: oblique panels of dense pigments become embedded and fortified, while tiny trickles or rivulets of liquified paint point to their underlying fragility.
Innes was short-listed for the Turner and Jerwood Prizes in 1995, won the NatWest Prize for Painting in 1998, and in 2002 was awarded the Jerwood Prize for Painting. Innes’s work is included in major public collections worldwide including: the Tate Gallery, London, England; the Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland; the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Centre George Pompidou, France; The Irish Museum of Modern Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; and Deutsche Bank. In 2012 he was commissioned by the Edinburgh Arts Festival to transform the capital’s Regent Bridge, which he illuminated with a changing sequence of colored light. In 2016, Innes was the subject of a major retrospective survey exhibition and accompanying monograph, I’ll Close My Eyes, at the De Pont Museum in Tilburg Netherlands.
