Harold Ancart - The higher powers command, 2014 - Photo by Sebastien Bozon

Harold Ancart

July 29, 2013

Belgian artist Harold Ancart is best known for his installations, sculptures, drawings, and paintings that blur the line between abstraction and figuration. The artist does not shy away from using versatile media and materials such as concrete, lines, and steel to create an immersive experience for the audience. Today, Ancart's work is part of numerous private and public collections, including Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in  New York, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles to name a few.

Abstraction

In 2007, Harold Ancart (born in Brussels in 1980) graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels de La Cambre in Belgium with an MFA. The artist's ability to capture the essence of urban landscapes and transform them into poetic abstraction was what captured the attention of critics and art lovers. For Ancart, exhibitions should be an experience for the viewers. The artist said:

I like to envision exhibits not so much as a succession of objects to be looked at but as tensions created between the various zones of emptiness.

He draws inspiration from the works of masters such as Frank Miller, Katsuhiro Otomo, James Ensor, and Oskar Kokoschka. The exhibition that marked a turning point in his career was the 2016 exhibition at the Menil Collection in Houston, in which he presented works he created during a road trip across the US.

Harold Ancart's Works

Even though he grew up and studied art in Belgium, Ancart felt closer to the style of American artists, such as Wayne Thiebaud. Ancart's themes range from the tangible structures of buildings to the intangible atmospheres that permeate cityscapes. His art captures the essence of both the physical and emotional landscapes, creating a dialogue between the concrete reality of architecture and the ephemeral nature of human experiences within these spaces. Ancart said:

To me, the understanding of form is the understanding of color. This is what the visual environment is made of: masses of colors that overlap, blend, assemble, or dissociate from one another and generate forms.

Works such as Untitled (Day and Night) and Untitled (The Wind, The Soil, The Rain) showcase the artist's unique artistic practice that utilizes bold contrasts to convey the duality of urban existence.

Exhibitions

Throughout his career, Harold Ancart has showcased his work all over the world, including The Inner Island (2023) at Villa Carmignac in France, A Mind Made of Silk (2023) at C L E A R I N G in Brussels, Harold Ancart: Paintings (2023) at Gagosian Gallery in New York, Sky to the East, Sky to the West (2022) at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.

Harold Ancart lives and works in New York.

Featured image: Installation view. 

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