Ada Ihmels: Forest and the nuisance of our time: Project Room

Forest and the nuisance of our time is a solo exhibition of sculpture by Swedish artist Ada Ihmels, to be installed in our Project Room. This is the artist's first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.

In Forest and the nuisance of our time, Ada Ihmels fills a gallery with ethereal and symbolic forms that are placed on low pedestals, creating a naturalistic environment. These painted mixed media assemblages seem to tempt gravity, yet act as a concrete reverie that stand in Ihmels’ world as an unmoving relic. The shapes relate to images stained in the sculptor’s mind, possibly from a lucid dream. The volumes are each painted black and they swallow objects – a folding chair, a ship’s tattered sail - and transform them into remnants of something past, a past action, or a past object of use that has taken allegiance to its own being.

Through her practice of making “automatic drawings,” Ihmels creates an intuitive visual language that informs the physicality of this sculptural “forest.” Ada Ihmels’ work is truly unfettered and comes from a place of focusing on the freedom of raw thought.