Chris Andrews is pleased to announce Calla McInnes’ second solo exhibition with the gallery, It Wasn’t Love. The exhibition comprises three paintings on canvas, and three paintings on paper.
In their practice, McInnes recurrently attends to the psychology of perception. Their diluted portraiture often revolves around a single representational feature – a profile of a chin, a torso, a pair of glasses, depicting silhouetted subjects turned from the viewer’s gaze. The same image is often recounted, treated with slight variations, as if rehearsals or varying versions of the same song. This recurrence of subject appears in It Wasn’t Love, where five works depict the same cropped view of a reclining figure wearing a shirt with the text “Boise” across its front.
Intentionally cropped or retracted, their fragmented language of portraiture is more reminiscent of a glimpse in peripheral vision than incisive representation. These meditations on perception are at the heart of McInnes’ images, where fore- and background often commingle on the surface, the scene and the system of perspective itself rendered fluid.
Calla McInnes (b. 1998) is an artist living and working in Montréal. They hold a BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (2020), and are currently an MFA candidate at Bard College, Annadale-on-Hudson, New York. Recent exhibitions include Chris Andrews, Montréal (2023, 2025), Shower, Seoul (2024), and Gated, New York (2022).
Reclining Figure III, 2025. Oil on Yupo paper.
25 x 38 inches, 26 x 39 inches framed.
Reclining Figure II, 2025. Oil, chalk, and wax on canvas.
16 x 20 inches.
The Study, 2025. Oil on translucent paper.
11 x 14 inches, 16 x 19 inches framed.
Reclining Figure I, 2025. Oil and chalk on canvas.
16 x 20 inches.
Tracy, 2025. Oil on translucent paper.
11 x 14 inches, 16 x 19 inches framed.
Reclining Figure IV, 2026. Oil and wax on canvas.
24 x 30 inches.
