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Lot Essay
‘This is the planet of painting, after all, and Ancart’s space exploration is the exploration of painted space: more than depicting petals and flames, how might a painting itself grow like a flower, ignite like fire, and bring about forms that thrive as life-forms in the otherworld it always is?’
– Chinnie Ding
Divided in two distinct sections, Harold Ancart’s Untitled, 2018, is exuberantly graphic. In the upper black rectangle sits an alluring, almost cartographic oxblood form. Below, vivacious, bold grasses in sunflower yellow, turquoise, cobalt, and orange swell and ripple against a gleaming white background. The impenetrable black pigment of the oil sticks contrasts with the glowing colours, separated by a horizontal line, a formal device favoured by the artist. Frequently, Ancart has been compared to Clyfford Still, who applied vibrant pigments with a palette knife to produce jagged, lightning-like shapes. Ancart’s severe division echoes hard-edge abstraction, and, like his predecessors, he too sees colour as a vital force. In melding figurative and non-representational imagery together, however, Ancart’s approach is more inclusive.
In charting new and thrilling territories, Ancart’s Untitled reveals a window onto an undiscovered land; the excitement of the present work rests in its refusal to be wholly recognizable. This is an exotic planet where half-tones and shadows do not exist, where candy-cane colours threaten to fall into an animated void, where form mutates in a constant state of ‘coalescence and disassembly’ (C. Ding, ‘Harold Ancart’, Artforum, June 2015, n. p.). Ancart’s deft use of colour elegantly balances a torrent of expression and provides a glimpse of a land that feels familiar yet revelatory. In Untitled, an ecstasy of colour is tempered by darkness, a fantasia of intensity and absence.
– Chinnie Ding
Divided in two distinct sections, Harold Ancart’s Untitled, 2018, is exuberantly graphic. In the upper black rectangle sits an alluring, almost cartographic oxblood form. Below, vivacious, bold grasses in sunflower yellow, turquoise, cobalt, and orange swell and ripple against a gleaming white background. The impenetrable black pigment of the oil sticks contrasts with the glowing colours, separated by a horizontal line, a formal device favoured by the artist. Frequently, Ancart has been compared to Clyfford Still, who applied vibrant pigments with a palette knife to produce jagged, lightning-like shapes. Ancart’s severe division echoes hard-edge abstraction, and, like his predecessors, he too sees colour as a vital force. In melding figurative and non-representational imagery together, however, Ancart’s approach is more inclusive.
In charting new and thrilling territories, Ancart’s Untitled reveals a window onto an undiscovered land; the excitement of the present work rests in its refusal to be wholly recognizable. This is an exotic planet where half-tones and shadows do not exist, where candy-cane colours threaten to fall into an animated void, where form mutates in a constant state of ‘coalescence and disassembly’ (C. Ding, ‘Harold Ancart’, Artforum, June 2015, n. p.). Ancart’s deft use of colour elegantly balances a torrent of expression and provides a glimpse of a land that feels familiar yet revelatory. In Untitled, an ecstasy of colour is tempered by darkness, a fantasia of intensity and absence.