Exposed
Callum Innes’ work invites us to dissolve space, blur boundaries, and enter painting as experience
words – philippa dahrouj
artwork & photography – callum innes
photography – gautier deblonde
location – beirut, lebanon; oslo, norway; london, uk
He paints. He explores. He constructs and deconstructs space. Afterwards, he invites us in – at first to the gallery space, and then inside his world. It should not matter, for now, who Callum Innes is. To look at his work is to forget about the creator and producer. To look at his work is to be immersed in the spatiality of it all; the painted canvas is not a distinct entity. As he enjoys generating and breaking rhythms, he invites the viewer to tag along on this journey by exiting the physical space and exploring the internal space of the work of art. As we abolish perspectival norms and notions of spatiality, we give in to the dimensionality of the work. Our interaction is perceptive. As we attempt to unpack this conception of space, Innes draws the movement of the eye, as it stares at his work: “you read the Exposed Area, your eye follows it down, and then your eye goes up to the top of the feathering. Then, your eye twists again and goes down to the bottom left or right corner where there is a rectangle.”
By the mere act of looking, our eyes delineate and construct the space. Our perceptive abilities delimit the space surrounding us. By the mere act of existing, we interact in, and with, space. However, we are not mere visitors to a pre-existing space. Instead, we participate in its formation by engaging with several other components. French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty beautifully outlines the characteristics of what we identify as space. He writes: “space is not the setting [real or logical] in which things are arranged, but the means whereby the position of things becomes possible. This means that instead of imagining it as a sort of ether in which all things float, or conceiving it abstractly as a characteristic that they have in common, we must think of it as the universal power enabling them to be connected.”
We are always, all of us, in too many spaces. How hard to be wholly present, when we are present in the whole
The success of an artwork is arguably measured by the connectivity established between it and the viewer. Innes says: “if a painting is succeeding, people talk about the quiet area which I have not painted as being the active part, or ask me how I painted the quiet part.” The quiet part of the negative space is what we understand – in poststructuralist terms – as the difference, the reinforcer of the functional space or exposed space. The quiet area is where our eyes navigate to be reminded of our existence. Nonetheless, our existence transcends the finished outcome of the artwork. We also come to life via this chaotic process, through which the organisation of space takes place. Are we not witnessing a new genesis? In his studio, the canvas dissolves the dimensionality of space. Thus, at the moment of encounter, we dissolve it too. At that moment, many temporalities are intertwined.
We speak here of an active viewer, who is not solely looking at the object of art as an adjacent element in space, a part of the passive physical space surrounding them. The viewer, the individual, at the moment of encounter, enters the space of the work of art – what Innes calls the internal space. There, the walls of reality are abolished, and space and time are reimagined. Standing in front of the painting incites the viewer to reconsider spatiality, to abandon the physicality of space. Only then can one enter the space of the painting.
We speak here of an active viewer, who is not solely looking at the object of art as an adjacent element in space, a part of the passive physical space surrounding them. The viewer, the individual, at the moment of encounter, enters the space of the work of art – what Innes calls the internal space. There, the walls of reality are abolished, and space and time are reimagined. Standing in front of the painting incites the viewer to reconsider spatiality, to abandon the physicality of space. Only then can one enter the space of the painting. Innes’s ‘Edges’ series challenges the relation of viewer, artwork, space and distance as we witness an experiment of the overlap of two colours. The meeting line of both pigments is the edges. However, these edges are not only a frontal manifestation. Interestingly, the relevance of this series is in the motion of the viewer, who, by turning around unravels the “evidence of the artwork.” Understanding this series entices the viewer to move in space, to challenge the normative spatial relations of gallery-going, and merge the physical space with that of the artwork. ‘Edges’ come to life at the moment we break the spatial patterns. ‘Edges,’ and indeed many more of Innes’s works, are alleviated by the viewer’s interaction and absorption. Innes’s work comes to life at different temporalities. However, somehow these temporalities meet: the artist leaving the studio space to enter the painting paralleled by the time of viewing. What matters is not for the work to be displayed, for the work to speak. What matters is for the work to be heard, examined, exposed; not only to speak but to communicate. For that, the viewer is expected to let their guard down and let themself be immersed in painting the inner world of the painting. By letting our walls down, we facilitate the spatial merger and enrich the experiential journey.
Writers experience this mental diplopia, inhabiting real and unreal space at the same time.
Social constructs and curated exhibitions tend to affect our reading of visual arts – and our absorption by them. We incline to engage with the narrative imposed upon us as we listen to the edited story and consider the fabricated space. Callum Innes’s insistence on experiencing the artwork individually, rather than through the artist’s existence, creates possibility for dissociation and new narratives. As he delivers to us a captured time and space, he invites us to get lost in this twirling abstract world as a journey of self-discovery.
The location of the artwork is irrelevant as it is independent of the physical space. Each work of art is to be enjoyed on its own, to be delved into and devoured. Even though repetition is an undeniable element of his work and process, each finished piece offers a different version of Callum Innes. No two artworks are the same as the space of the painting defines itself autonomously from the input of the artist. We cannot deny that Innes is the author of these works. And yet, at the end of the process, he too becomes a viewer. He too explores the painted space. He too is submerged in a world he created. And each world is a perfected version of himself, an ongoing quest for excellence.
Now, it feels right to introduce you to Callum Innes. After graduating from Gray’s School of Art and Edinburgh College of Art, his career took off in the mid-1980s with two major exhibitions, at the ICA, London, and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. He explores space and colour across mediums and surfaces. He has won several prestigious awards, including the Jerwood Prize for Painting and the NatWest Prize for Painting. His work is held in the public collections of the Guggenheim, Centre Pompidou, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Tate and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, alongside many other national and international galleries. You might have met him mid-journey in one of these works, and if not, you definitely should. You could decide to visit his watercolours or oil paintings. You could also decide on the colour itself, or the methodological exploration. Maybe you’ll get lost in the erasure of the colour and its physical aftermath, or perhaps in the richness of the original pigment. Maybe then, space will redefine itself, boundaries will fall, and edges will become blurred out.
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