EDINBURGH.- The Fruitmarket Gallery presents 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.

Calame’s paintings and drawings all begin with Calame tracing marks, stains and cracks on the ground. She then combines, layers and retraces the tracings before transforming them into drawings in coloured pencil or pure pigment and paintings in enamel or, more recently, oil paint. The works that result from this singular process are beautiful and intelligent abstractions. 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 1994 to 2011. Poised between sspspss..UM biddle BOP, 1997, a huge painting on Mylar (architectural tracing paper) 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 singular visual language from her earliest tracings on her studio floor 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.

Calame’s paintings and drawings all begin with Calame tracing marks, stains and cracks on the ground. She then combines, layers and retraces the tracings before transforming them into drawings in coloured pencil or pure pigment and paintings in enamel or, more recently, oil paint. The works that result from this singular process are beautiful and intelligent abstractions. Displayed in a gallery, they retain their connection with the world outside at several removes, exerting an oddly insistent presence.

Ingrid Calame was born in the Bronx, New York in 1965. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

On the occasion of her exhibition Ingrid Calame has produced a silkscreen print in an edition of 50 exclusively for the Gallery, price £250.

The Fruitmarket Gallery aims to make art accessible without compromising art or underestimating audiences. It presents world-class, thought-provoking and challenging exhibitions of modern and contemporary art made by both Scottish and international artists in an environment that is welcoming, engaging, informative and always free.

Ingrid Calame is represented by Frith Street Gallery, London, James Cohen Gallery, New York and Shanghai and Galerie Schmidt Maczollek, Cologne