Today we go #InDetail with Callum Innes’ Untitled Lamp Black / Crimson Lake, 2019.
#CallumInnes’ Untitled Lamp Black Paintings include the eponymous color, a matte black of particular richness and depth. In this series of paintings, the picture plane is bisected vertically; the colors are painted and left to dry before the black paint is applied and subsequently removed from one half of the painting. The luminosity of these works comes from the color initially applied to the canvas, now altered by the removal of the black paint. The muted surface of this matte black on one half of the painting stands in stark contrast to the ethereal glow of the chromatic intensity on the other half. The resultant paintings are spare, elegant canvases that combine a formal precision with an intense poetic beauty and conceptual complexity. The creation of the works is physically arduous as they must be completed in a single day.In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Innes explained “I make a painting and work with the surface, then dissolve it, taking it off with turpentine. In many ways, I am dissolving an image that is in my head…With the paintings, [I] make a black made of many colors…until I dissolve it. Then the colors separate so that color will be revealed."
Untitled Lamp Black / Crimson Lake, 2019, oil on linen, 98 7/16 x 95 1/4 inches