Ida Ekblad

Longer Poems (KONS)

Oil on canvas

180 × 140 cm

Executed in 2015

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Ida Ekblad (born 1980) is a Norwegian artist who works across painting, sculpture, installation and poetry. Ekblad’s expressive paintings often depict winding and twisted lines, some indicate human-like figures, others resemble landscapes. The forms and gestures found in her work derive from a wide variety of inspirations and art historical references, such as CoBrA, Situationism and Abstract Expressionism but also pop cultural aesthetics like graffiti or cartoon that indicate Ekblad’s genre-crossing approach.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

In Longer Poems (KONS) (2015), the picture plane is divided into two sections: an upper part displaying soft clouds of pastel colour, and a flat black plane at the bottom onto which a series of repeating letters in bright white angular lines spell “KONS”. Their stylisation likens them to a pattern or to Celtic runes. Ekblad’s expressive paintings often depict these twisted designs, some indicating human-like figures, others resembling script. Their form evokes the pop cultural aesthetics of graffiti or cartoon. This mirrors the use of spray paint in the top section, a medium associated with urban street art and graffiti, artistic interventions into contemporary urban public life. By calling the piece Longer Poems, Ekblad further links the visual to poetry. ‘Painting to me combines expressions of rhythm, poetry, scent, emotion’, she says.