HAROLD ANCART

Ancart’s paintings portray the natural world and built environments. Alluding to a range of art historical sources and often characterised by abstract passages of colour, his most recent works aim to develop a connection between the landscape and the inner self.

The works on view concentrate on nocturnal scenes. In two of the canvases, bodies of water are framed by dark skies and rock formations. Two further compositions are arrangements of trees and other plants, while the titular work returns the viewer to a constructed environment.

For Ancart, the subjects of his paintings often serve as “alibis” for him to experiment with paint and color. The paintings in 좋은 밤 Good Night blur the boundaries between figuration and abstraction: “Objects and their surroundings do not appear as clearly defined when lit up by moonlight, the stars, or a streetlight as they do during daytime. Where one doesn’t perceive clearly, one must be perceiving differently. In the shadows, things seem to be more susceptible to metamorphosis,” says the artist.

In Sleeping Tree (2025), a single tree stands at the center of the composition. The mottled dark blue of its cloudlike foliage merges into the sky behind it as a dense, multihued cluster of other plants rise from the soil beneath. In another work, Field and Dawn (2025), a tree is shadowed by several smaller ones against a diffuse horizon that glows orange and white. In the two seascapes, respectively titled View and Grand View (both 2025), Ancart focuses the viewer’s attention on an identical scene in which subtle color combinations shift as if traveling in time from the early evening deeper into the night.

Finally, in Good Night (2024), Ancart juxtaposes the pink blossoms of a tree that stands outside a house with fragments of the landscape paintings—surely his own—that hang on the wall inside. As in the other works on view, dark blue splotches interrupt the surface of this work. This effectively conjoins the scene’s different elements and serves as a reminder of the constructed nature of this and every work of art.