The Fruitmarket Gallery announces the first solo exhibition in Scotland of the work of American artist Ingrid Calame, whose beautifully-coloured, intricate drawings and paintings have a specific, if abstracted relationship to the world. Exhibition open 4 August–9 October 2011.
Calame’s paintings and drawings all begin with tracings of marks, stains and cracks on the ground made by the artist in various urban locations. Back in the studio, the tracings are combined, layered and re-traced in coloured pencil, painted in enamel and, more recently, oil paint. The paintings and drawings that result from this singular process are beautiful and intelligent abstract works. Displayed in a gallery, they retain their connection with the world outside at several removes, exerting an oddly insistent presence.
This exhibition brings together drawings and paintings made from 1997 to 2011. Poised between sspspss..UM biddle BOP, 1997, a huge painting on Mylar that drapes from the gallery wall to the floor, and a new wall drawing LA River at Clearwater Street, 2006–8 made especially for and in The Fruitmarket Gallery, the exhibition presents the development of Calame’s abstract visual language from her earliest outdoor tracings to her most recent workings and reworkings of marks recorded in the dried-out concrete riverbed of the L.A. River and at three locations in Buffalo: the ArcelorMittal Steel Shipping Building, the Perry Street Projects wading pool, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery parking lot.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a new publication, Trace, edited, designed, produced and published by The Fruitmarket Gallery. With over 100 illustrations, newly-commissioned writing by Michael Newman and Brian Dillon, and a conversation between Ingrid Calame, photographer Shelby Roberts, and Fiona Bradley and Elizabeth McLean of The Fruitmarket Gallery, this substantial monograph presents Calame’s career to date.
Talks and events
Artist’s Talk
Friday 5 August, 3pm. Free.
Ingrid Calame in conversation with Fiona Bradley, Director of The Fruitmarket Gallery.
Talk: Mark Dorrian, Adventures on the Vertical
Thursday 29 September, 6.30pm. Free.
Professor Mark Dorrian (University of Newcastle) explores the poetics, politics and powers of looking from above.
Seminar: Feminism and Contemporary Art
Wednesday 5 October, 5–8.15pm.
Is gender, as Susan Hiller suggests, a ‘non-issue’ for women artists now? This seminar brings together artists, art historians and curators to explore the place of feminism and gender politics in the fields of contemporary art making, curating and art history research and publications. Speakers include: artists Rachel Adams and Kate Davis, art historians and writers Angela Dimitrakaki (University of Edinburgh), Alexandra Kokoli (Gray’s School of Art), Declan Long (National College of Art and Design, Dublin) and Sarah Lowndes (Glasgow School of Art). Chaired by Moira Jeffrey.
Booking is recommended for all talks. To book your place call 0131 226 8181 or email [email protected]
Image: Ingrid Calame, “From #258 Drawing” (Tracings from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the L.A. River) (detail), 2007.
Enamel paint on aluminium, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Carmen and Mark Holeman Contemporary Fund, 2008.3.
Limited Edition
On the occasion of her exhibition Ingrid Calame has produced a silkscreen print in an edition of 50 exclusively for the Gallery.
Always affordable and exclusive to The Fruitmarket Gallery, the editions offer an opportunity to collect new work by major contemporary artists including Claire Barclay, Willie Doherty, Christine Borland and Keith Farquhar.
To order or for more information on future editions please contact the bookshop P 0131 226 8181 E [email protected]
The Fruitmarket Gallery
45 Market Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1DF
Open seven days. Always free
www.fruitmarket.co.uk