Ida Ekblad: Blood Optics

Ida Ekblad’s (Oslo, 1980) practice draws inspiration from many different things such as Old Master painting, textile industry, manga culture, Venetian glass, deviant art, typography, Wiener Verkstatte, meme-culture, Scandinavian arts and crafts, Norwegian cast iron traditions, style-evolutions in clothes, faux-graffiti, vinyl cover-design, magazine clippings, poster culture.
In her latest works she has been focusing on historic archives about the recovery of ancient crockery from sunken ships in Norway, as well as crochet pieces which she has included in her pictorial and sculptural work.
“Blood Optics” presents a new series of large-format paintings in which Ekblad uses bright colors and a technique that she calls Puff Paint (inflated textile paint), that has become her trademark. For this she uses industrial heaters inside her studio to make the plastic-based paint react to the heat and inflate until it creates a relief or 3D texture.