Callan Contemporary is pleased to present Udo Nöger: Inside Out, an exhibition of paintings that explore the elusive territory between material and immaterial, visibility and concealment, and the physical surface of a work and the light that passes through it. Working at the intersection of painting, sculpture, and light, the German-born artist has developed a singular approach to abstraction in which perception is inseparable from the materials of painting.
Nöger constructs his paintings with carefully layered, translucent canvas, mineral oils, and subtle structural interventions. Rather than applying an image solely to the surface, he allows forms to emerge from within the work. Light is absorbed, transmitted, and diffused through the layers, revealing shapes that appear to hover in a space beyond the canvas. As ambient conditions change, so too does the viewer’s experience of the painting.
The exhibition brings these luminous compositions into dialogue with Nöger’s charcoal paintings. In works such as Lichtfelder 68, charcoal gives weight and immediacy to the artist’s engagement with form, gesture, and texture. The contrast between the charcoal’s dense darkness and the translucent paintings’ soft illumination underscores a shared investigation: how a shape becomes visible, and how the surface both reveals and withholds it.
The title Inside Out suggests a reversal of the conventional relationship between image and support. Forms that seem embedded inside the paintings are disclosed through the very materials that obscure them. Across monochromatic fields and restrained organic geometries, Nöger creates an experience of looking that unfolds gradually, inviting the viewer to attend to changes in light, depth, and presence rather than to a fixed image.
Born in Germany in 1961, Nöger has exhibited internationally. His work is held in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver; the Bass Museum of Art, Miami; and Haus der Kunst, Munich, among others. A solo exhibition of his work is scheduled to be featured in Chasing the Light, Dancing in the Shadows at the San Diego Museum of Art in 2027.
In Inside Out, painting becomes an encounter with light itself. Nöger’s works ask viewers to consider not only what is seen, but the changing conditions through which seeing becomes possible.