Jonathan Callan

The Narrows - Installation View 5 - Detail

Jonathan Callan (b. 1961, UK) studied at Goldsmiths College and the Slade School of Fine Art. He was the Henry Moore Fellow in Sculpture, Winchester school of Art (1993) and won the Boise scholarship in 1992.

Callan’s work ranges across a diverse set of mediums, methods and materials. It is linked by a preoccupation with the limitations of language. Callan often works with texts, books, maps, and photographs. Much of this information is sourced and filtered from secondhand books. He regards his own culture as one that is predominately literary and has had an almost lifelong concern in trying to reconcile his own deep interest in materiality with that pervasive literary history. The work can be both small and intimate and also expansive, sculptural installations that occupy whole spaces.

In Jonathan's words, "Most of my work is derived from a fascination with materiality. I'm interested in fluff, dirt, dust. I'm interested in things breaking down. I'm interested in that which cannot be said but can only be shown. Most objects to me are not real until I can find what is inside. Which presents a paradox, since we can only ever see the surface of things. The real interior of any object is seen as a series of surfaces beyond and behind which are only more interior surfaces. This is a morbid inclination. Perhaps implying that things can only be understood after having been broken down or destroyed, suggesting that the attainment of knowledge is an invasive procedure, no gaze or observation leaving its subject unmarked."

Patrick Heide Contemporary Art was pleased to present a Solo Exhibition by Callan entitled The Narrows in February of 2024. The artists' first solo exhibition in London for 19 years presented a body of work that marked connections between the experience of artists’ progressive hearing loss and the profound readjustment the artist sees taking place within Western culture as it comes to terms with its relative decline in a world being remade.

Jonathan Callan was also featured in a group show entitled Tearing, Punching, Squeezing, Drilling in the Summer of 2024 at Patrick Heide Contemporary Art. Callan exhibited a range of his sculptures, made entirely from collected books, which he squeezes and twists, recharging or obliterating their original content. The sculptures, though made from industrial materials, resemble natural forms, symbolically returning books to their original form as tree trunks. For his recent series of works, Callan poignantly uses editions of The British Empire magazines, a series about the Empire's history and influence, presenting it uncritically and sympathetically that would not be possible nowadays.

Jonathan Callan's work is included in major museum collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The British Museum, London, The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK, South London Gallery, London, Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, UK, The British Council, The Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, The High Museum Atlanta, GA, The West Collection, Pennsylvania, The Leopold Hörsch Museum Düren, Germany, Princeton University Art Museum, New York, Progressive Art Collection ’Ohio and JP Morgan Chase Bank, New York.

Exhibtions at the Gallery

The Narrows, 2024 (Solo Exhibtion)

Tearing, Punching, Squeezing, Drilling, 2024, (Group Show)