Peder Lund

Ida Ekblad (b. 1980, Norway) is one of the most recognised contemporary artists of her generation working today. Her artistic practice comprises a variety of mediums such as painting, sculpture, performance, filmmaking, and poetry. Her work is inspired by a multitude of sources and one can recognize sub-cultural and pop-cultural influences. Art historically, Ekblad’s oeuvre is influenced by a variety of artists such as Odilon Redon, Paula Modersohn Becker, Paul Thek, Harriet Backer, Edvard Munch, Florine Stettheimer, and Helen Frankenthaler. Her style is signified by a genre-crossing approach and incorporates, for example, the aesthetics of graffiti, manga culture, arts and crafts, old master paintings, deviant art, and meme culture. Ekblad’s practice is focused on our hyper-retinal culture which she tries to visually record and comprehend. “Whatever sense I find,” she says, “is primarily an aesthetic sense. In painting, sculpture, and via material twists and turns, I am striving to make a personal and decent pattern of what happens to come my way.” (Ida Ekblad, Artist Statement, “A mansion for all lovely forms,” 2018)

Ekblad lives and works in Oslo. She is educated 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 (2011, 2017), as well as in numerous solo and group exhibitions, besides her most recent solo show in 2021 at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, her work was presented at a variety of institutions in solo exhibitions, among them 2019 at Kunsthalle Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland and Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico; Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany (2018); Kunsthaus Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany (2017); National Museum of Art, Design and Architecture, Oslo, Norway (2013); Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway (2010); Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden (2010).

Her work is owned by a multitude of important public and private institutions and collections around the world.