A favourite of Concrete Hermit, Ekta produces large scale paintings and installations all over the world. Ekta currently resides in his ORO gallery in Sweden.
Your work is pretty reminiscent of Dadaism, how would you talk about your work to someone who hasn’t seen it?
Dada is to me the single most important movement in art and many of my all time favourite artists came from there such as: Francis Picabia / Kurt Schwitters / Max Ernst etc. I find it really hard to explain what I do but I usually really enjoy the process of making stuff and I hope that energy transfers to my art.
What’s the story behind the ‘Face’ print?
The original is done with spray paint on canvas 75x106 cm. I started with a basic bust shape that I've been using a lot recently, then I just play around with lines and see where I end up. In this particular painting it's a bit like mixing portrait with landscape. A mindscape...
Tell us about the ORO Gallery in Sweden
It's where I have my studio and I’m there pretty much everyday. We're 6 artists working here and sometimes we have exhibitions / gigs etc. Recently we've been using the exhibition space as an extension of our studios and cut back a bit on the exhibitions but we do have some stuff planned later this year. It's been around since 2006.
We hear you do a few animations as well; can you tell us the process behind them?
I did a couple of short films in 1999- 2000, unfortunately I only have them on Beta as they were done in a traditional 2d way, drawn on cell and filmed. I did some loops last year as part of an exhibition I had in Sweden, it's a collaboration with sound artist The extended head, he provided me with sound pieces that I listened to during my 2 weeks of animating with ink & brush on a bit of wood panel. The image & sound has not been synchronized in editing, the idea was to use four screens and let the sync happen by chance.