David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by the Belgian-born, New York–based artist Harold Ancart. Spanning the 525 and 533 West 19th Street spaces in New York, this presentation marks the artist’s second solo show with David Zwirner following his 2018 debut at our London gallery.

On view in one gallery space will be a new series of paintings that depict trees. These works were painted between Ancart’s Brooklyn studio and a makeshift outdoor studio in Los Angeles, where he traveled during lockdown. Pointing to references as varied as René Magritte, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, and Piet Mondrian, who approached this subject matter in distinct ways, Ancart’s tree paintings blur form and color, figure and ground, figuration and abstraction.

In the other gallery space, there will be two multi-panel canvases that situate the viewer between a mountainscape and a seascape, both monumental in scale. These works are inspired in part by the artist’s encounter with the modernist landscape murals of the American painter Gottardo Piazzoni (1872–1945) permanently installed at the De Young Museum, San Francisco.

The exhibition constructs an immersive landscape experience, and together, the works on view comprise a meditation on the expansive possibilities of painting.

Image:
Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2020
© Harold Ancart / SABAM, Brussels
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner
Photo by JSP Art Photography