Ida Ekblad
Portrait of Ida Ekblad by Jacqueline Landvik 2019. Courtesy of the artist and Peder Lund.
Ida Ekblad (b. 1980, Norway) is one of the most recognized contemporary Norwegian artists 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, comprehend and reformulate in her own artistic accent.
Whatever sense I find, 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
Ekblad lives and works in Oslo. She is educated at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2007) and at 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 solo shows in 2019 at the Kunsthalle Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland and the Museum Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico, her work was presented at a variety of institutions in solo exhibitions, among them Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany, 2018; Kunsthaus Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany, 2017; National Museum of Art, Design and Architecture, Oslo, Norway, 2013; Bergen Kunsthalle Bergen, Norway, 2010; Bonniers Kunsthalle, Stockholm, Sweden, 2010. Group exhibitions which presented Ekblad works include shows at acclaimed institutions such as the Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Switzerland, 2015; Kunsthall Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway, 2014; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, 2013; Kunstmuseum Luzern, Luzern, Switzerland, 2013; Migros Museum in Zurich, 2011; New Museum, New York, USA, 2009; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, USA, 2008. In the summer of 2021, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, have dedicated a major solo exhibition to Ekblad.
Ekblad's work is owned by a multitude of important public and private institutions and collections around the world.
Portrait of Ida Ekblad by Jacqueline Landvik 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Peder Lund.
