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.

Ida Ekblad

Peder Lund is delighted to announce the exhibition 

 with fantastic new works by the Norwegian artist Ida Ekblad (1980- ). It is the first solo exhibition of the artist in Norway since her major show at the National Museum of Art, Design, and Architecture, Oslo in 2013. The exhibition opens on November 14 and continues through February 13, 2021. An opening reception will be held on November 14 from 12-6 pm.

Ida Ekblad is one of the most recognized contemporary Scandinavian artists working today. Her artistic practice comprises a variety of mediums such as painting, sculpture, performance, filmmaking, and poetry. The exhibition is focused on Ekblad’s painterly work and presents a handful of selected paintings and works on paper, all created in 2020. The exhibition is titled after the largest work in the exhibition, 

, an impressive diptych with a seemingly abstract composition in vibrant colors.

As the title suggests, Ekblad’s works comprise more than they reveal and the circumstance that the abstract compositions are inspired by a multitude of sources might be one reason why her works are so fascinating. Though, through her mastery of color and forms, they capture the viewer in a direct, retinal way and mesmerize through their intensity and haptic sensation.

Ekblad is interested in exploring “the slippery slope that runs from the good taste, the sharp style, the cutting edge aesthetics to the overboard propositions, the tasteless gestures, and a deep desperation.” Fittingly, one can recognize forms of high and low culture in her work in everything from manga figures to graffiti tags to decorative patterns from textiles, porcelain, and glass. These motifs, however, are transformed in a way that lets them become nearly abstract, hence following a long tradition of painting to explore the nuances of how to perceive the world through the heightened lens of painting. It is a medium through which she can express a complexity that exceeds what we can communicate through language. The best comparison for the shift that takes place in Ekblad’s work is probably poetry as it doesn’t try to depict things rationally but rather focuses on what happens between the lines.

Interestingly, a lot of the shapes Ekblad picks up in her works are also not derived from figurative elements she sees, but the spaces in between – forgotten forms that are normally overlooked because our vision is rationalized to concentrate on picking up symbols that we can translate directly into meaning. In contrast, Ekblad’s vision shares a similarity with Marcel Proust’s famous description of the smell of a madeleine which evokes involuntary memories. Through her paintings, Ekblad can capture sensory dimensions, ephemeral feelings, and thoughts that are materialized through her distinctive impasto style of painting.

As Ekblad has described on several occasions, her work is often inspired by personal memories. However, in the end, she is searching for a “futurism,” a “radical decor” which can be “clogged up of dystopian Philip K Dick-Esque nightmares” or comprise “very sweet sad post-rave after-glow introspective moods” to present us with a 

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). 

Ekblad’s work is owned by a multitude of important public and private institutions and collections around the world. Only this year, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Danmark, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, the KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes, Bergen, Norway, the Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, Norway and the National Museum of Art, Design and Architecture, Oslo, Norway have all added major works by the artist to their collections and recently, another leading institution of the world has decided that they will add her work to their celebrated collection as well.

Works