Angus MacInnes

More Real Than Veal

14 July - 11 August 2017

4 Murieston Lane, Edinburgh

Hunted Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Scottish painter Angus MacInnes (b.1969, Glasgow). Featuring a series of small-scale paintings, More Real Than Veal is the artist’s first exhibition with Hunted Projects in Edinburgh.

In the current climate where disposable imagery is the every day norm it is becoming increasingly difficult to discover painters who disconnect from the fast paced world of images, choosing instead to examine timeless beauty and subtle material concerns. Angus MacInnes is one such artist, revealing his world slowly. Perhaps an anomaly, MacInnes bears minimal presence during social occasions choosing to read books at home about painting. He is essentially an old fashioned recluse.

MacInnes’ complex protean oeuvre is built on a unique and colourful visual language that is three decades in the making. He often works on twenty to thirty paintings at once. His paintings are sometimes stacked wet on wet and regularly become subject to the chance marks of mishandling. MacInnes is not a stranger to taking risks for he believes that his paintings are in constant flux, evolving gradually and slowly, sometimes taking over 5 years to complete, as works are revisited time and time again until they formally click into place.

The works on show within More Real Than Veal more specifically make reference to conceptions of space rather than responding to specific places or objects. MacInnes makes use of atmospheric expanses of colour as a foil for his more thickly laid gestural strokes of paint. Such textural and representational discordance offers a means of conveying vast spatial distinctions as well as material fact. While no clear representation is visible, intersecting sections of harmonious colour flirt with suggestions that “walk a tightrope of signification”. His surfaces highlight an acute awareness of the history of abstraction, more specifically, colour field painting. His directional mark making shows an understanding and respect for the subtleties of painterly facture. The works are inevitably suggestive of pastoralism in their composition, mood, colour and atmosphere, and the title of the exhibition draws on this association, colliding it together with Jean Baudrillard’s concept of “hyper-reality”, tantalizing and perplexing both the eye and brain.

This intimate series of works illustrates MacInnes’ dedication to the medium of paint both historically and materially. Confidently evolved, each painting bears testament to a refined technical and academic know how. Heralding a significant new stage within the artist’s career, More Real Than Veal proves that MacInnes’ paintings challenge, confront and delight in equal measure.