Ida Ekblad MarIus Engh anawana haloba lars lauMann - Statoil

IDA EKBLAD,
OR FOR THE NEW YEAR
One and the same civilisation simultaneously
produces two wholly different traditions of
art, or more exactly two conflicting modes
of appreciation and understanding. The first
tradition is the negative one. Negative is meant
here is a purely technical sense: negativity
means rebellion, criticism, boldness and
innovation, revolution, rejection of authority
and tradition, and, ultimately, freedom.
Negative refers to that initial, amazing cry of
“no!” that has served as the engine for modern
and now contemporary art. It is impossible to
imagine the culture of modernity without this
urge to reject and destroy. As Picasso so aptly
expressed it:
Painting is not made to decorate apartments.
It is an instrument for offensive and defensive
war against the enemy.
There is, however, another tradition:
the affirmative one. It begins with an entirely
different set of assumptions. Rather than locate
a target – authority, capitalism, tradition,
or the law of the father – in order to negate
or dismantle it, the inception is reverence for
the endless, indescribable flux of all things.
This approach generates both problems and
paradoxes. The task of idol-smashing cannot
be taken too seriously when it is known from
the outset that everything, even gods and
idols, will soon disappear. “Soon you will be
forgotten,” Aurelius wrote, “soon all things will
have forgotten you.” Measured against eternity,
nothing seems to have much meaning.
How, then, to create? On what grounds is one to
make decisions, or function at all? The challenge,
from this perspective, is to wrest something
meaningful from the chaos of sensation. And
if the negative tradition places hope in the
future (i.e., criticism will lead to a better world,
or a better self), the affirmative tradition tends
instead to seek a pure present, because it is only
in the present that anything is present at all; the
future, as Stephen Dedalus mused unhappily, is
only the past seen in a dream.
Ida Ekblad belongs to this second tradition.
Her work matters not because of any
refinements of temperament and technique
(although these are there too, in abundance)