1/9unosunove is pleased to announce the opening of Simon Callery. Red and Orange
Step Paintings, a solo exhibition by the London-based artist with new works created between Italy and England in recent years.
“Between 2019 and 2022 I rented a small shop in Turin as a studio. From there I would load the car with rolls of canvas and in 45 minutes I would be high up in the Valle di Lanzo. I found a special place to work where the river Stura di Lanzo meets the Stura di Viu. Here I began my painting process and soaked all the canvas in the water to soften it for colouring. The paintings in this show are predominately red. The paint I use is called distemper – a medium of rabbit skin glue mixed with dry pigment, which I sponge or brush into the canvas when the size is hot. The pigment I used the most for this group of paintings is cadmium red deep and it has very fine grains. As a result, it is drawn down into the softened and open cotton fibres, uniting the colour and the fabric. I think of colour as material. I want it to play an equal role alongside the cotton duck canvas and the wood that constitute a painting.
After I had coloured the canvas, I went back up to the river to lay it out on the rocks. I marked it with graphite and cut it where I felt a contact with the stony ground underneath. When I work outside in the landscape, I generate as much material for the paintings as I can. The weather always has an impact on what is possible and when the conditions are good, I work without holding back, marking and cutting into the fabric. I am focussed and I work fast and make decisions without hesitation. At the end of each session, I roll up the large sheets and gather up all the fragments and cut-out pieces.
There are advantages to working outside. It forces you to be direct and this can lead to unexpected results. The controlled environment of the studio allows for other decisions about the subtleties of the surface detail, of proportions or the precise physical scale of a painting, to be made. In the studio I machine sewed all the canvas elements together to construct the paintings with an open internal space. These works combine the inside with the outside, with what you can do in the landscape with what you can do in the studio. They do not represent the place where they are made but they are a physical register of contact with it.
When I left Turin, I took all this canvas with me back to London. At first, I worked on a rectangular shaped painting; Stura Contact Painting, 2021, and then a work with rectangles in a linear sequence; 3 Part Stura Contact Painting, 2021. As this group of paintings grew, I started to concentrate on cut squares incorporating a step; Red Wing, 2024 and Red Wing (small), 2024. I began to attach the small scraps of canvas I had collected to the front faces, initially with steel pins and then stainless steel and copper wires. Finally, these front faces were either draped over the ‘body’ of the painting or hand stitched directly onto it. Throughout the whole process, the one thing that was always at the front of my mind was to find ways to establish materiality as the language of painting.”
Simon Callery
ABOUT
Simon Callery (London, 1960) is a painter currently living and working in London. Callery has exhibited in numerous galleries and museums in the UK and internationally.
Early shows include; YOUNG BRITISH ARTISTS III, Saatchi Gallery, London (1994). MURI. Christian Stein Gallery. Turin (1995). SENSATION, Royal Academy of Arts, London (1997). ABOUT VISION, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1997). ART NOW 19. Tate. London (1999). PAPER ASSETS. British Museum. London (2001). SEGSBURY PROJECT. Dover Castle. UK (2003). Recent solo shows include; FULL CIRCLE PIT PAINTINGS. Kappa Noun. Bologna (2024). CONTACT PAINTING. CAB, Burgos, Spain (2023). SIMON CALLERY. Rafael Perez Hernando Gallery, Madrid (2023). FIELD WORK. Annex14, Zurich (2023). SIMON CALLERY. 1/9unosunove, Rome (2019).
Recent group shows include; UNREAL CITY. Saatchi Gallery. London (2024). CO-EXTENSIVE. Rudolfinum. Prague (2023). ROMA, A PORTRAIT. Palazzo delle Esposizioni. Rome (2023). STONE, SAND & CLOTH. Simon Callery, Susana Solano. Francisco de Zurbarán. Monasterio Santa Maria de Bujedo de Juarros. Burgos, Spain (2022). YELLOW. Simon Callery & Torgny Wilcke. Officinet. Copenhagen (2019). BOUNDLESS ENCOUNTERS. Hangzhou Triennial of Fibre Art. Zhejiang Art Museum. Hangzhou. China (2019).
Collections include: Arts Council Collection, London. Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art. Oslo. Birmingham Museum Trust. British Museum, London. European Investment Bank, Luxembourg. Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris. Nottingham Trent University. Stanhope plc. Tate, London.