Libasse Ka’s Abstractions Channel Chaos and Calm
Libasse Ka: Untitled, 2023 (left), and Untitled, 2024 (right). Photo Damian Griffiths/©Libasse Ka/Courtesy Carlos/Ishikawa, London
Libasse Ka’s paintings offer inventive solutions to thoroughly painterly problems. Take an untitled canvas from 2025, which features a dark silhouette of an umbrella that Ka painted on a piece of newspaper and then pressed onto the surface of his canvas, transferring the image before throwing the newspaper away. Painting the umbrella directly on the canvas “would have been too literal,” he explained when I visited his Brussels studio.
Ka’s works, with their pale surfaces, are mostly abstract, though oscillate between free gestures and recognizable forms—an umbrella, a car, a human in silhouette wielding a hammer, etc. They vary in size, with recent works tending toward larger canvases.
