Artists

Ida Ekblad

Press release

Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to present EAT AN EGGPLANT, a solo exhibition of new works by Ida Ekblad. This is the artist's sixth exhibition with the gallery, and her first in the London space. Taking a distinctly painterly approach to a wide range of media, Ekblad presents new oil on linen paintings, oils on paper, enamel on steel works, hand-painted bronze sculptures, and a large glass lantern for EAT AN EGGPLANT. Acting as a near-homophone, the exhibition title draws from the humorous mispronunciation of the artist's name by her friend's young child, as 'Eatan Eggplant'. Such notions of slippage and the accidental are at play across Ekblad's practice, where fragments and ideas bleed into one another, evolving and echoing through time. Like snippets of memory, shapes, colours and words reoccur in differing forms: delicate lace is painted in thick, impasto paint or cast in dense, heavy metal; light bends and warps through glass or the surface of a resin bench. Contesting painting's ostensible demand for flatness, the exhibition encapsulates Ekblad's poetic and interdisciplinary approach to image-making. Here, images and objects are rendered interchangeable, becoming fluid vessels for the artist's imagination. Visible from street level, a large bronze sculpture is displayed on the gallery's first-floor balcony, marking a threshold into – or out of – the space. Imbued with the drippy quality of watercolour painting, the work's solid weightiness is juxtaposed with a sense of ephemerality. 'It has this urgent but also flimsy quality to it,' the artist notes. Inside the gallery, the row of eight street-facing windows is covered with lace half-curtains in the style of old cafés – tendine a mezza finestra. Custom designed by Ekblad and embroidered with the words 'da SPETTACOLO' (spectacle), they set the scene for the unfolding exhibition. In lieu of plinths, a large wooden museum table displays three hand-painted bronze sculptures. Rendered in the artist's quintessentially vibrant palette, they appear like deconstructed fragments from one of her paintings, bookended with lace-imprinted columns. This pattern is echoed in the cast iron frames of Ekblad's two 'Painter's Benches' – sculptural furniture made with polyurethane in respective hues of turquoise and fuchsia pink. Suspended in the resin seat are paint-encrusted paper plates, leftover from Ekblad's painting process. Glossy and jewel-like, the artist describes them as 'palettes like fossils in amber, trapped beneath your ass cheeks.' In her new body of enamel works, anamorphic forms in similarly vivid hues sprawl over steel surfaces with the visceral immediacy of graffiti. Long captivated by the appearance of snakeskin, Ekblad has begun painting its textured patterns onto her large-scale canvases. Depicted with rich impasto oil paint, which she describes as 'so thick it's perverse', the works feel almost sculptural in nature. Letter-like shapes are overlaid on top. Developed through a technique of cutting out words from magazines so that only the negative space remains, the forms become visually reminiscent of the font and style of '90s rave flyers. This notion of one idea shifting and morphing into something else is central to Ekblad's practice. 'It's like different atmospheres that linger in me,' she explains. In gallery two, a new glass lantern by the artist is suspended from the ceiling. Sitting big and low, it casts diffracted light across the space. The work continues Ekblad's recent explorations into the medium of glass, which she approaches like painting: glass dust is applied like pigment, areas of opacity and translucency converge, and pieces of glass are melted together with the luminosity of watercolour. Embracing chance as an integral part of her material library, Ekblad draws on the push and pull between spontaneity and deliberation. From urgent and electric to ambient and ethereal, EAT AN EGGPLANT encompasses the artist's instinctive and expansive practice. Ida Ekblad (b. 1980, Oslo) lives and works in Oslo. The artist studied at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2007) and the Mountain School of Arts, Los Angeles (2008). She participated in the Venice Biennale in 2011 and 2017. Ekblad's work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions including Kunsthaus Zürich (2024); KODE Art Museum, Bergen (2023); Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (2021); Kunsthalle Zürich; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (both 2019); Kunstverein Braunschweig (2018); Kunsthaus Hamburg (2017); The National Museum of Art, Design and Architecture, Oslo (2013); Bergen Kunsthall; and Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2010). The artist's works are in the collections of Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; The British Museum, London; Buffalo AKG Art Museum; Centre Pompidou, Paris; CCS Bard - Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker; Kunsthaus Zürich; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; National Museum, Oslo; and Rubell Museum, Miami among others. A major survey of Ida Ekblad's work opens at The Hepworth Wakefield in November 2026, before travelling to Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, in 2027.