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until 16.04. | #3352ARTatBerlin | Galerie Max Hetzler is currently showing an exhibition of works by the artist Ida Ekblad at Potsdamer Straße 77-87. This is the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.
Ida Ekblad is one of the best-known contemporary Scandinavian artists today. Her artistic practice encompasses a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, performance, film production and poetry. This holistic understanding of art also informs her work in its components, for she sees herself not only as a painter, but also as a designer, poet and curator.
This self-image has its origins in Ekblad’s artistic influence through the graffiti and skater scene, which to this day has given her an experimental attitude also in the choice of her working materials. The artist mixes a wide range of popular cultural aesthetics, including graffiti, manga cartoons, digital imagery, literature and music, traditional crafts, poetry and art historical movements such as CoBrA and Abstract Expressionism. High culture and pop culture meet and merge, overriding common value systems and guidelines.
At the centre of the exhibition are new oil paintings by Ida Ekblad. In many respects, they are reminiscent of the works with the plastisol paint developed by the artist herself, which has characterised her work for several years.
for several years. The characteristic thick texture of plastisol paint is here imitated in oil with a raw and generous impasto, and recurring patterns are used in both techniques. The
brushwork here also has a tactile quality, with areas of thick, wet paint rising from the surface. Presented in colourful frames, the works consist of vibrant, saturated compositions with unfolding patterns, shapes and hues. Their surfaces are enlivened by elements reminiscent of plants, flowers, butterflies and stars. The visual language of the works is very colourful and relies not so much on recognisable figurative elements but on the contours of the spaces in between. Thus, the viewer searches for theme and symbol, but finds only shifting visual patterns and colours that do not translate directly into likenesses. The paintings are visually complex and vary from sombre and powerful to almost fragile and fragile. Often the paintings are placed by the artist in “constellations” next to or on top of each other during the construction of the exhibition, revealing new relationships between them. This unusual method of varying the works allows for surprising and spontaneous ways of seeing them.
Ida Ekblad, FROTHY EYEBALLS, 2022, oil on linen, in artist’s frame,
183,2 x 143,2 x 5,5 cm. Foto: Uli Holz
Ida Ekblad (*1980, Oslo) lives and works in Oslo, Norway. The artist studied at Central Saint Martins in London, the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and the Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles. In recent years, Ekblad’s work has been exhibited internationally, including major solo exhibitions at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (2021), Kunsthalle Zurich and Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2019), XYZ Collective, Tokyo (2018), and Kunsthaus Hamburg, Hamburg (2017). The artist participated in the Venice Biennale in 2011 and 2017.
Ida Ekblad’s works are in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the National Museum, Oslo; the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; the de la Cruz Collection, Miami; the Rubell Family Collection, Miami; the Kunsthaus, Zurich; the Zabludowicz Collection, London; and the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, among others.
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 12 February – Saturday, 16 April 2022
To the Gallery
Further exhibitions at the Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin:
Ida Ekblad
2. Februar – 16. April 2022
Gold Bug Drift Sculpture (Tepito and Ecatepec), Amor, 2019
Window Gallery, Goethestraße 2/3, 10623 Berlin-Charlottenburg
Thomas Struth
3. March – 21. May 2022
Bleibtreustraße 45 & Bleibtreustraße 15/16, 10623 Berlin-Charlottenburg
Hans Josephsohn
11. Februar – 16. April 2022
Goethestraße 2/3, 10623 Berlin-Charlottenburg
Exhibition Ida Ekblad – Galerie Max Hetzler | Contemporary Art – Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin – Exhibitions Berlin Galleries – ART at Berlin
