CALLUM INNES (Edinburgh 1962–lives and works in Edinburgh) Exposed Painting. Paynes Grey / Charcoal on White. 1998. Oil on canvas. Signed and dated on the overlap: Innes. 98, as well as with the work number on the stretcher: CI 98 31. 87.5 × 80.5 cm. Provenance: - Galerie Bob van Orsouw, Zurich (verso with the label). - Purchased from the above by the previous owner in 1998, private collection Switzerland. - By desent to the present owner, private collection Switzerland. Callum Innes is probably one of the best-known artists in Great Britain today. From the nineties onwards, he worked in parallel on a dozen different series. The most extensive series is entitled "Exposed Painting", which he began in 1992 and which he is still developing today. His picture supports are mainly paper or canvas, which are primed with white paint. He divides these geometrically into different and unequal horizontal and vertical zones by applying monochrome areas of oil paint across the entire width. Before the oil paint dries, he wipes away part of the surface with turpentine, a liquid solvent for oil paint. This creates a veil-like, shimmering, almost transparent layer of colour, which gives a hint of the former colour pigments and at the same time brings out new pigments. Callum Innes mixes his oil colours himself, in which black tones dominate, but also red, violet, and olive tones are intermingled. Our present painting "Exposed Painting" from 1998 has as its focus a solid black horizontal beam, which is interrupted by the diffuse light grey veil of colour which is traced vertically. The turpentine has revealed a light mist of black pigments, or more precisely, the black paint has been "Exposed", visibly exposed. This particular technique of addition and subtraction, of putting on and taking off, of adding and taking away, of opening and closing, of the diaphanous and the opaque, is what the artist calls "unpaint". A disciplined monochrome painting that produces uncertain results and constantly obliges the painter to discover, question and renew the technique he has developed.