Untitled 3

Two chunks of white and beige sit against a field of deep, textured red, and that is nearly all there is to it. The smaller piece on the left looks like a slab or a curb, while the larger one on the right rises into a shape that could be a mountain, an iceberg, or just a heap of paint. Both cast dark shadows beneath them, which grounds them and gives the flat red a sense of depth. Harold Ancart, a Belgian artist based in New York, likes to work this way, letting simple forms hover somewhere between recognizable objects and pure abstraction.

Ancart often paints landscapes and everyday things reduced to their barest outlines, so a viewer can read them however they like. The red here is not one smooth color but a surface full of brushy streaks and shifts in tone, which keeps the background from feeling empty. Whether you see two icebergs drifting in a red sea or just blocks of color arranged on a canvas, the painting leaves that decision up to you. It is a small puzzle with no correct answer, which is part of why Ancart's work has caught on with collectors and museums alike.