Ida Ekblad — A Deep Medicine — Max Hetzler Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 21 → June 27, 2020

Ida Ekblad, A Deep Medicine — Galerie Max Hetzler Discover in pictures the newest serie of Ida Ekblad’s paintings, A Deep Medicine.

Galerie Max Hetzler announces an exhibition with new oil paintings by Ida Ekblad.

Ida Ekblad explains that she has tried to copy in oil what she recently achieved in her signature puff and plastisol works. In oil there is another world of pigment. Ekblad uses the highest quality paint with no fillers, pure cold pressed linseed, which makes the colors extremely varied. Puff turns matte when heated and dried, but these oils are saturated and shiny, vibrant, almost freaky.

Ekblad adds that for this show she has reached back into the 80-ies of her childhood and tried to strike a “Vangelis chord”, a wet neon noir but without the clichés. Clouds of noble gas, laser shapes and ionized helium. She calls it a “Phildickian reality-flip”; an archive of sweet memories is everted and turned into a paranoid delirium. A crisp landscape, a plein-air TRON, translucent, fluorescent but also upside down and slippery, trippy, nauseating. Ida Ekblad tries to process these “sights” through her Scheveningen rose, cobalt violet, ruby red, and the Old Holland green, she is overdoing it, exaggerating it, “adding a sour Vermillion”. She lets the oils build up, sediment, smear and mushroom. She is “pouring out the juice, adding sauce, always more sauce”.

The artist talks about “filtering Jean Michel Jarre” through a deviant manga feed, pink synth orgies, a feeling of watching full movies in the reflection of Gargoyles ANSI sunglasses — Starman, Flight of the Navigator. A neon casino where you cash in more than you lose. Cigarette smoke curling. She sees Daryl Hannah’s blonde wig and airbrushed eyes. Tiled bathrooms and bulb-lit, jam-packed medicine cabinets. Android dreams. Dark flasks with deep medicine.

Ida Ekblad (1980, Oslo) lives and works in Oslo, Norway. In June 2020, her work will be presented in a solo exhibition at the Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo. Her work has been presented at the Venice Biennale (2017) and has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including Kunsthalle Zurich, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (both 2019); Kunstverein Braunschweig (2018); Kunsthaus Hamburg (2017); BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2015); National Museum of Norway — Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo (2013); Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Bergen Kunsthall (both 2010), among others. She participated in numerous group shows such as National Museum of Norway — Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo (2018); FRAC Normandie, Les Bains-Douches, Alençon (2016); Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo (2015 and 2012); Kunsthalle Bern (2015); Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (both 2013) and New Museum, New York (2009). Her works are in the collections of the Aishti Foundation, Beirut; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo; Contemporary Art Society, London; De La Cruz Collection, Miami; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson; Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; National Museum, Oslo; Preus Museum, Horten; Zabludowicz Collection, London, among others.