Nasjonalmuseet presents Ida Ekblad's first extensive museum exhibition. The exhibition continues the museum's series showcasing younger Norwegian contemporary artists. Since the beginning in 2009 the series has included Matias Faldbakken, Camilla Løw, Snorre Ytterstad and Marte Aas.
The works of Ida Ekblad oscillate between an unrestrained imagination and her familiarity with an art-historical tradition. Her paintings in particular are courageous demonstrations of the relevance and feasibility of an expressive artistic gesture.
Ekblad works in a variety of media—painting, sculpture, installation, performance, and poetry—simultaneously and without hierarchical distinction. Among her sources of inspiration are movements in art history such as CoBrA, Situationism and Abstract Expressionism. She also alludes to forms of expression in contemporary pop and subculture, including in the non-visual domains of literature and music.
For this exhibition, Ekblad has used the museum as her studio, producing more than 30 works in situ. These new works improvise a performative architecture out of industrial debris, found objects and shopping carts. Their rubber wheels were used for printing excerpts of poems riotously onto canvases, displayed later as a series of large scale paintings along the walls.
Process-oriented art
Ekblad works in a process-oriented manner, and her approach is often described as spontaneous and fearless. She creates installations, sculptures and collage- and assemblage-like pieces from fragments and objects that she finds along the roadside and at construction sites nearby the places she is working. Things that have apparently lost their value and been thrown away often acquire a new meaning by being re-used in a work of art imbued with other qualities and connotations.
Ida Ekblad (b. Oslo, 1980; lives and works in Oslo) is educated at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2007) and at the Mountain School of Arts, Los Angeles, USA (2008). Still an emerging artist, Ekblad has already received international recognition participating in museum exhibitions around the world.
The exhibition is a collaboration between the National Museum in Oslo, Kunstmuseum Luzern and De Vleeshal, Middelburg. It is accompanied by a 160-page catalogue published by Distanz Verlag, Berlin, with poems by Ida Ekblad and contributions by Fanni Fetzer, Andrea Kroksnes, Quinn Latimer, and Barry Schwabsky.
Curator: Andrea Kroksnes
Curator education: Christin Fonn / Line Engen
Project manager: Marthe Tveitan
February 15 – August 18
PARADOX. Positions in Norwegian video art 1980–2010
Since the 1980s, Norwegian video art has gone from being a marginal art form to a dominant discipline. This exhibition presents a selection of Norwegian video works from 1980 to 2010.
Read the exhibition blog here:
http://norskvideokunst.blogspot.no/
We trace the development of video art, from an innovative technique in the late 1970s through to its present-day incorporation in the field of digital art – from being a conceptual and technical idiom to a postmodern form of expression that is integrated digitally with related techniques such as film and photography.
Are there identifiable qualities specific to video art that has endured despite rapid technological advances? In what areas has video as a medium had an impact on Norwegian art? How did the video medium evolve between 1980 and 2010 in Norwegian art?
Thematic categories
The exhibition is divided into eight different categories. The headings refer to crucial intersections between technological and art-historical developments of relevance to video art: “A conceptual foundation – Self-reflexivity and time”, “The material dimension – Sound and image”, “The formal dimension – Composition and time”, “The virtual – An expansive medium”, “Performance – Time and context”, “Identity –Staging and role-play”, “A shift towards film – Documentary and fiction” and “Poetic narrative –The mediated image”.
Participating artists include:
Kristin Bergaust, Kjell Bjørgeengen, Morten Børresen, A K Dolven,Unn Fahlstrøm,Matias Faldbakken, Bodil Furu,Marit Følstad,Mai Hofstad Gunnes, Jason Havneraas, Marianne Heske,Narve Hovdenakk, Lars Lauman, Lotte Konow Lund, Jannicke Låker,Per Maning, Elisabeth Mathisen, Trine Lise Nedreaas,Ole Jørgen Ness,Sven Påhlsson, Kjartan Slettemark, Per Teljer, Jeremy Welsh and Knut Åsdam.
Curator: Eva Klerck Gange
Curator education: Christin Fonn / Line Engen
Project manager: Marthe Tveitan
The exhibition is sponsored by:
