IDA EKBLAD

Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to present Ida Ekblad’s new sculpture BOOK OF BOREDOM for Frieze Sculpture 2022. Ekblad’s sculptures form a central part of her artistic practice and allow her to integrate various forms of expression from painting to poetry. As such, BOOK OF BOREDOM is emblematic of her radical take on medium specificity; playfully defying age-old tradition, she reinterprets the conventions of classifying artistic media as a rule to be broken. With her practice deeply rooted in painting, Ekblad investigates the potential of painterly technique to rebel against the medium’s supposed demand for flatness. Her various distinctive methods of mixing and layering paint endow her works with texture and spatiality, introducing a sense of depth that challenges the canonical tradition of painting. 

Continuing down the road of experimentation, BOOK OF BOREDOM exemplifies a new chapter of Ekblad’s practice that sees disparate remainders of flat artworks stacked together in a gravity-defying, three-dimensional manner. To achieve this hybrid form, initially she follows the same approach as her paintings: ‘cutting, uniting and assembling shapes and forms’. Ekblad then hand paints onto bronze-cast structures as though they were canvasses. Like the cut-outs of collages, the flat surface parts are consecutively assembled through the Cubist method of a jigsaw-puzzle-like composition. Reinvigorating this technique, the artist creates a multi-perspective synthesis of mind and memory. Highlighting transformation at the centre of Ekblad’s practice, curator Daniel Baumann asks: ‘[W]hat is art other than a conversion of material, images, colour, or politics into a new state or form by means of thought and action?’ Pointing at the excitement the process carries, he states: ‘Ida Ekblad rehearses it joyously and at breakneck speed, over and over again.’  

In search for source material, Ekblad often reverts to archival material. She draws from art history, film, music and digital archives and revisits her own earlier works for inspiration. Pushing her own visual practice forward by ‘repeating or stuttering’, she believes that ‘[t]he futurism of it all is often found in the rear-view mirror.’ In line with this philosophy, Ekblad’s plein-air creations initiate conversations with canonical works of the past. By visually calling forth the likes of Pablo Picasso’s Bust of Sylvette, Jean Dubuffet’s Monument with Standing Beast (see fig. 1 and 2), or Roy Lichtenstein’s Brushstroke sculptures, Ekblad demonstrates the heavily male-dominated lineage that precedes her. Alongside Niki de Saint Phalle’s (fig. 3) and Louise Bourgeois’ landmark sculptures, BOOK OF BOREDOM not only constitutes a reflection on artistic media but also critically engages with the gendered reality of opportunity structures in the art world past and present. 

REFERENCES

D. Baumann, ‘How to Escape It’, in Ida Ekblad. Melted Snow, exh. cat., Lenz: Milano, 2022.
I. Ekblad, ‘Hungry Eyes. Ida Ekblad in Conversation with Joe Bradley’, in Ida Ekblad. Minigrafi – Minigraph, exh. cat., Kunstnernes Hus: Oslo, 2021. 

Ida Ekblad (*1980, Oslo) lives and works in Oslo. The artist studied at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2007) and the Mountain School of Arts, Los Angeles, USA (2008). She participated in the Venice Biennale in 2011 and 2017. In recent years, her work has been exhibited internationally, including major solo exhibitions at the Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (2021); Kunsthalle Zürich (2019); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2019); Jardin des Tuileries, Paris (2019); Kunstverein Braunschweig (2018); Kunsthaus Hamburg (2017); The National Museum of Norway, Oslo (2013); Kunstmuseum Luzern (2013); Bergen Kunsthall (2010); and Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2010). 

Ida Ekblad’s works are in the collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Fondation Louis Vuitton; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker; KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes, Bergen; the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and The National Museum of Norway, Oslo, among others.