Ida Ekblad: EAT AN EGGPLANT | Galerie Max Hetzler
The Norwegian artist Ida Ekblad’s friend has a young child who mispronounces her name as “Eatan Eggplant”. EAT AN EGGPLANT seems a suitable title for her new London show.
Ekblad’s a multi-media artist whose media tend to overlap, rub against and merge into each other in surprising ways. It’s her first show in the gallery’s London space, though her sixth with Max Hetzler overall.
The dark second gallery holds a large glass lantern, spinning slowly, pendant-hung, an LED glowing inside it. Ekblad has cross-hatched the glass with thick, shiny paint on top, so the light comes through broken up, in fragments.
The other room is louder: oil on linen, enamel on steel, earthy and gestural. Strong, a bit brutal. There’s an obvious debt to Dubuffet in the chunky biomorphic forms and the crude figuration, though Ekblad’s palette is deeper than Dubuffet’s chalky ochres.
At the end of the main gallery a long table holds two glass benches and three hand-painted bronze sculptures, arranged like place settings. Paper plates sit on the table too, painted over, laid out as if for a meal nobody’s going to eat. Delicate lace elsewhere in the show turns up here recast in heavy bronze. Same motif, different weight each time.
Ida Ekblad: EAT AN EGGPLANT is at Galerie Max Hetzler (London). 3 June - 8 August 2026