FARE-YE-WELL

Extracted from the strong smelling asphalt froth A deep red female scale insect Ho, yes, ho!

The lips of her ship is moldy The dosh in her pocket is gone

Since roving`s been her ruin Oh aye, oh

The stairs are sleep inducing Way, hay up, steady she goes

The chimes of bells she faintly hears be all ears – Be ALL ears Then cast her mind in the stream with fusticwood shavings and soot colored tears

kut-kut-kut hissed the vacuum Beep beep! purred the dusty chimes of chrome

Oh poor old horse is buried in sand All dat done has drifted from land

- Ida Ekblad

The Journal Gallery is proud to present Salty Sap Green Black, Ida Ekblad’s first U.S. solo exhibition.

Ekblad (born 1980) is an artist currently living and working in Oslo, Norway. Her sculptural works: The Gold Bug Drift (NYC) are based on “drifts” in a given city, for Salty Sap Green Black the city is New York.

Like William Legrand in Edgar Allen Poe`s The Gold Bug, Ekblad has been bitten by a bug that has led her onto a path of unexpected undertakings; a form of modern day piracy. The gems and treasures gleaned from her “drifts” are laid to rest in vessels of concrete at the time of discovery and carried around the city in the course of production until her sculptures are achieved. The resulting works thus becoming the poetic attestations of her performative actions, unlike the “drift” itself, which Ekblad describes as the unequivocal treasure, the act of deconstructing habits of experiencing and discovering an area or a city.

Ekblad received a Masters degree from the National Academy of Art, Oslo in 2007 and attended the Mountain School of Arts, Los Angeles in 2008. Recent exhibitions include Favoured Nations: 5th North Biennial of Contemporary Art, Norway, What Leaf? What Mushroom? at New Jerseyy, Basel, Febermalerier at Gaudel De Stampa, Paris, Younger Than Jesus at The New Museum, New York, In Exile of The Mineral Kingdom at Annen Etage, Oslo, Woman under The Influence at Alessandro de March, Milan and Dark Continents at MOCA Miami. This fall she will be included in the three person group show, Europäisch-Amerikanische Freundschaft, at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York.