Artist: Harold Ancart
Venue: C L E A R I N G, New York, US
Date: May 1 – June 17, 2018
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and C L E A R I N G
Harold Ancart’s horizon line is limitless. It extends through numerous paintings, photographs, sculptures, and drawings in an inexhaustible exploration of painterly space and color. Though Harold Ancart’s new paintings are figurative, they may also be among his most abstract. In his work, subject matter serves as an alibi for the paint to be pushed into the canvas, says the artist. Once again the paintings reveal a series of images that are connected to a delirious longing for escape, or connectivity to one’s place. Ancart has pared down his imagery to elemental forms while amplifying scale and tonality. Clouds, fires, icebergs, and imposing flora are the identifiable shapes he uses to strip landscape painting down to its rudiments. The irreducible qualities of painting, and of drawing, have long been Ancart’s driving concern. Ancart fuses the techniques of both, creating radiant compositions that recall the most animate works of the Color Field painters, while extending their delicate minimalism into an exuberant vision.
Ancart recognizes an unquenchable search for a kind of Eden, or escape, as a constant feature of our imaginations. This vast collective ideal is the setting for Harold’s new paintings, in which he discovers the possibilities for transformative experience are not just out “there”, but here, in the arena of painting.
Harold Ancart (born 1980 in Brussels) lives and works in New York.
His work has been exhibited at the Menil Collection, Houston; Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; WIELS, Brussels; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Rubell Family Collection, Miami; and Yuz Museum, Shanghai.
In 2019, Ancart will have a Public Art Fund commission in New York.
Harold Ancart’s work is part of the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Menil Collection, Houston; MOCA, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Beyeler Foundation, Basel.
Harold Ancart, 2018, exhibition view, C L E A R I N G, New York
Harold Ancart, 2018, exhibition view, C L E A R I N G, New York
Harold Ancart, 2018, exhibition view, C L E A R I N G, New York
Harold Ancart, 2018, exhibition view, C L E A R I N G, New York
Harold Ancart, 2018, exhibition view, C L E A R I N G, New York
Harold Ancart, 2018, exhibition view, C L E A R I N G, New York
Harold Ancart, 2018, exhibition view, C L E A R I N G, New York
Harold Ancart, 2018, exhibition view, C L E A R I N G, New York
Harold Ancart, 2018, exhibition view, C L E A R I N G, New York
Harold Ancart, 2018, exhibition view, C L E A R I N G, New York
Harold Ancart, 2018, exhibition view, C L E A R I N G, New York
Harold Ancart, 2018, exhibition view, C L E A R I N G, New York
Harold Ancart, 2018, exhibition view, C L E A R I N G, New York
Harold Ancart, 2018, exhibition view, C L E A R I N G, New York
Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2018, Oil stick and pencil on canvas, artist’s frame, 96 x 80 inches (243.8 x 203.2 cm)
Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2018, Oil stick and pencil on canvas, artist’s frame, 85 x 69 inches (216 x 175.3 cm)
Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2018, Oil stick and pencil on canvas, artist’s frame, 113 x 81 inches (287 x 205.7 cm)
Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2018, Oil stick on concrete, 30 1/2 x 21 3/4 x 2 inches (77.5 x 55.2 x 5 cm)
Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2018, Oil stick on concrete, 30 1/2 x 21 3/4 x 2 inches (77.5 x 55.2 x 5 cm)
Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2018, Oil stick and pencil on paper, wood frame, 27 1/2 x 23 inches (69.8 x 58.4 cm)