Exhibition - and per se and: part VIII - Richard Forster & Callum Innes

and per se and is a rolling sequence of exhibitions where one work is paired with another for two weekly periods, across a stretch of 12 months. In the current phase of the sequence a seascape triptych by Richard Forster, in pencil on paper, is joined by a new painting by Callum Innes. Over the past 20 years Innes has emerged as one of the most single minded and successful abstract painters of his generation. His work sometimes makes oblique reference to earlier 20th century masters; the dense moodscapes of Mark Rothko perhaps or the eye -confounding monochromes of  Ellsworth Kelly, or in the case of the painting exhibited here, the vertical ‘zip’ so often associated with Barnett Newman. A vertical which links to Richard Forster’s use of the agitated line of the sea’s edge to explore formal concerns about image making.  For all these historical resonances, Innes’s language of painting and ‘un-painting' is one that is very much his own with, at its heart, the simple contradiction that something so apparently simple can have such a complex effect on the mind and eye. Both artists are also connected in their approach to time. As Fiona Bradley, Director of the Fruitmarket Gallery has said, Innes’ paintings ‘collapse the past of their own history into the present of their viewing experience’. In the same way Forster’s intensely worked drawings measure the elusive experience of an instant against the slow time of their making. For further information please contact Ingleby on info@inglebygallery.com or telephone +44 (0)131 556 4441.