You never know what the painting is going to look like. You may have predetermined ideas, but those ideas are never to be reached, and that is the beauty of it — the privilege of entering new, unconquerable, unthinkable territories. This implies that one must be ready to get lost. That is what exploration is about. The untold, the unfolded, the unknown. – Harold Ancart
Belgian-born, New York-based artist Harold Ancart began painting icebergs earlier this year in response to a particularly cold winter. The image of the iceberg has seduced artists for centuries as evidence of the mysterious forces of nature and as symbols of man’s deep connection to the landscape. Through Ancart’s characteristic play with color and paint application, the iceberg enters new artistic territory. A horizon line divides Ancart’s iceberg paintings into sea and sky, and, as a compositional choice, it shows the artist’s distinctive way of combining both figurative and abstract passages to create works that are curious and exploratory, yet remain beautiful meditations on nature and painting. Ancart’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at venues around the world, and his work is included in the permanent collections of numerous institutions worldwide, including the Fondation Beyeler, Basel; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Lenbachhaus, Munich; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk; The Menil Collection, Houston; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; LA MoCA; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Whitney Museum, New York.