Born and based in Edinburgh, Callum Innes studied drawing and painting at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen Scotland, and completed a post-graduate degree at Edinburgh College of Art. He is internationally recognised for his distinctive process of applying paint to the canvas and subsequently ‘unpainting’ it; washing away or removing the pigment to create varied and complex surfaces. This dynamic interplay between additive and subtractive processes—the making and unmaking—lends a lyrical, luminous quality to his paintings, yielding works that are both conceptually complex and visually evocative.

Innes’s abstract paintings occupy a space closely aligned with the minimalist vocabulary of artists such as Agnes Martin and Robert Ryman, however his oeuvre is distinguished in a number of ways, particularly by his brilliant use of colour. To create the Exposed Paintings, Innes begins with two unique colours which he mixes and applies to sections of the canvas; he then uses turpentine to remove a section of the paint before it dries, leaving all but the faintest vestigial traces of pigment. The result reveals varied veils of colour buried within the seemingly monochromatic single pigment.

In the Split Paintings, Innes literally divides the canvas in half vertically, then applies two separate colours across the entire surface before removing all but the echo of paint from one side only. This process is repeated, leaving one half of the painting covered in layered, complex colour, whilst the other half of the painting is exposed as much as possible. Inevitably, the cleaned half retains a palimpsest of the colours that were absorbed into the gesso; resulting in a palette that exists outside of the realm of traditional painting and suggests a far more unique chromatic vocabulary.

Innes has emerged as one of the most significant abstract painters of his generation, achieving widespread recognition through major solo and group shows worldwide. Innes was awarded the Jerwood Prize for Painting in 2002, and the NatWest Prize in 1998. In 1995 he was short listed for the Turner Prize.His work is included in many major public collections worldwide including: the Tate Gallery, London; the Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland; the NationalGalleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NewYork; the Centre George Pompidou, France; The Irish Museum of Modern Art; 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 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.

Sean Kelly Asia will be open to the public 16-20 January 2019, to coincide with the Taipei Dangdai art fair. After which we will be open by appointment only. To visit, please contact: Gladys Lin at Gladys@skny.com