Ida Ekblad with works made in situ in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo!

There will be a press conference for the Ida Ekblad exhibition in The largest gallery in Oslo’s Museum of Contemporary Art,Tuesday 23 April at 11  o’clock. The Banksalen room is presently converted into a studio for Norwegian contemporary artist Ida Ekblad. In the run-up to the opening of her exhibition, Ekblad is producing new works that configure into performative architecture comprising industrial scrap metal, found materials and paintings ‘painted’ with the wheels of shopping carts. A total of almost 30 new works fills the first floor of the Museum of Contemporary Art, in addition to a number of previously exhibited works.

Ida Ekblad’s works are frequently process oriented and her artistic practice is often described as spontaneous and chance-based.  Items seemingly discarded on scrapheaps as worthless are given new meaning through recycling in a work of art with other qualities and connotations. Her works oscillate between an unrestrained imagination and her familiarity with, and allusions to, an art-historical tradition. Ekblad’s paintings of the past five years, in particular, are courageous demonstrations of the relevance and feasibility of an expressive artistic gesture.. She works in a variety of media—painting, sculpture, installation, performance, and poetry—simultaneously and without hierarchical distinction.

“Ekblad’s sources of inspiration include historical art movements such as Situationism, Abstract expressionism and the COBRA painters,” explains the exhibition’s curator, Andrea Kroksnes. “At the same time, she draws inspiration from forms of expressionism in modern pop and subculture that do not necessarily manifest themselves in visual terms, but rather in literature and music. After a period during which her work took a more conceptual orientation, she is now devoting renewed attention to  the painterly and poetic sides of her art.”

The exhibition is part of the museum’s ongoing series of museum presentations bringing attention to emerging and mid-career Norwegian artists, previously featuring Matias Faldbakken, Camilla Løw, Marte Aas, and Snorre Ytterstad.

The exhibition, which opens on 26 April and runs until 15 September, presents Ekblad’s artistic output during the last five years.

 For press images:

http://www.nasjonalmuseet.no/no/presse/#/image/list