Ida Ekblad - Wired: Online Auction London Wednesday, October 28, 2020 | Phillips

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  • Description

    Please note this lot is the property of a private individual.

  • Provenance

    Karma International, Zurich
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Catalogue Essay

    ‘Ekblad’s work is formed of contradiction; that of the social and the solitary, the physical and the contemplative. In Ekblad’s work, these similarities and differences are held in a delicate balance’ — (Sarah McCrory, quoted in, Ida Ekblad. Poem Percussion, exh. cat., Bergen Kunsthall, 2010, online).

    Exulting the possibilities of colour and expressiveness in the realms of painting and sculpture, Ida Ekblad’s work has been garnering increased acclaim in recent years, both in her native Stockholm and internationally. Her two monographic shows at the Kunsthalle Zürich and Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, in 2019, recently typified the urgency of her rising star, as her proclivity to assemble colours, textures and genres was met with global praise. Toot Gameland Clatter Bang, executed in 2013, is a beautiful example from the artist’s painterly opus, displaying her precise consideration for both process and composition, as well as her playful arrangement of colourful forms. With bold brushstrokes of yellow, red, blue, purple, and orange, the painting displays a sumptuous blend of variously textured acrylics motioning in different directions, amounting to a kind of abstract landscape that mirrors Ekblad’s own inner digressions. On the nature of her oftentimes long and enigmatic titles, the artist explained: ‘Mostly I just dream up the titles. Other times I steal them. From anywhere. Films, books, the Internet. Or my daughter. Or my husband.’ (Ida Ekblad, quoted in ‘Hungry Eyes’, Muse Magazine, 10 February 2020, online).

    
Perpetually hinting at a discursive underbelly that betrays her own affinity towards various art forms, Ekblad’s paintings display a cacophony of winding, blossoming lines, rhythmically interacting at the surface of her chosen medium. One is reminded of the artist’s German predecessors who, a few decades prior, similarly approached painting through expressive means on a grand scale. Yet with Ekblad, the genre is actualised and endowed with soul; her animated surfaces display the mental meanderings of a self-proclaimed ‘madam’, whose artful creations are bold, assertive, and feminine. Educated at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts and the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Ekblad moreover looks to the literary — and specifically poetic — realm, whereby feelings, thoughts and reality exist as liminal, perceptive and deeply personal formulations. In both painting and poetry, Ekblad’s heroes are primarily vested with the sensory and bodily experience of existence: these include Lee Lozano, Carol Rama, Francis Bacon, but also Jean Cocteau, Albert Camus, Joris-Karl Huysmans. The forms and gestures found in her work also appear to derive from movements including CoBrA, Situationism and Abstract Expressionism. Blending these inspirations together in a language entirely her own, Ekblad asserts that it is ultimately the process of conception itself that drives her sense of aesthetics. ‘I really liked the trance of painting’, she said. ‘I do more and then some more and then too much’ (Ida Ekblad, quoted in ‘Hungry Eyes’, Muse Magazine, 10 February 2020, online).

3

Toot Gameland Clatter Bang

signed with the artist's initials 'I. E' lower right
acrylic on canvas
100.1 x 80.4 cm (39 3/8 x 31 5/8 in.)
Painted in 2013.

Estimate
£10,000 - 15,000 

Sold for £16,380

Contact Specialist

Charlotte Gibbs

Head of Sale, London

+44 20 7901 7993

cgibbs@phillips.com

Wired: Online Auction

Online Auction 28 October - 5 November 2020