Tender Command
A solo exhibition by I lona Szalay
I lona Szalay
Born in Beirut in 1975, Ilona Szalay completed an English Literature degree at the University of Oxford in 1997, before undertaking further studies at Central St Martins (Byam Shaw School of Art) from which she graduated in 2002 with an MFA.
This year she won the inaugural Women In Art Fair Prize, in past years she has been a finalist for the prestigious Threadneedle Prize (UK), and won the Ora Prize (Italy). Her exhibition history includes the Royal Academy, the British Painter’s Association, the Trinity Buoy Wharf prize and the Barbican as well as countless solo and group shows spanning the past two decades. Her work has been extensively exhibited in cities including Milan, London, Miami, Basel, Rome, Zurich, Toronto and New York.
Through a range of media from canvas to tracing paper, LED light to glass, Szalay engages the multitudinous dichotomies that make up both collective and individual subjective experience in restrained, poetic visual language. It is in liminal space – that between sites of dominance and submission, or power and vulnerability – that the figures in her work encounter one another.
The contrast between the subject she paints and how it is painted is never sharp or demanding; the heavy, looping strokes and soft lines made by her brush point towards something much more ingenious and intuitive. These are contrasts that are gestured at, never insisted upon, and allow for a kind of dialectic with the viewer: a set of techniques more native to the literary arts than to the visual medium in which she works.
Tender Command A confetti rain of luminous snapshots of power exercised, or dissipated.
These works play with intimacy’s hierarchies and shifting ranks, focusing on the sweet sting of an unusual embrace, or a surrender not readily taken.
In each there is the anticipation of a defining action, the germ of a fullness of understanding which anticipation can only gesture at.
A series of delectable candies you can’t help but crunch, whose potency belie their vivid wrappings.
American Girl 2017
oil and resin on wood (framed) 49cm x 43cm
£2,400 inc VAT
Bend 2017
oil on paper (framed)
x
Bird Boy 2016
oil paint on glass (framed)
53cm x 43cm
£2,800 inc VAT
oil on found frame
50cm x 60cm
£1,800 inc VAT
Boudoir Pose 2024
Brandish 2017 oil on paper (framed) 60cm x 40cm £950 inc VAT
Lift 2017
oil on paper (framed) 60cm x 40cm £950 inc VAT
Crimson 2024
oil paint on aluminium (framed) 53cm x 43cm
£3,000 inc VAT
Dressing 2016
oil and resin on wood (framed) 50cm x 40cm £1,800 inc VAT
Currenly at Paul Smith, Albemarle Street
Enchantress 2020 oil on paper (framed) 59cm x 84cm £2,800 inc VAT
£2,800 inc VAT
Implements of Seduction 2019
aluminium (framed)
53cm x 43cm
My Dear Ghost 2019 oil on aluminium (framed), 53cm x 43cm £3,000 inc VAT
2017
oil and resin on wood (framed) 60cm x 60cm
£1,800 inc VAT
Pool
Currenly at Paul Smith, Albemarle Street
Red Gloves 2018
oil on aluminium (framed) 63cm x 83cm £3,000 inc VAT
Currenly at Paul Smith, Albemarle Street
Repairs 2021 oil on aluminium
Seren and Otto 2023 oil on paper (framed) 84cm x 59cm
£2,800 inc VAT
Study for Agent 2021
oil on aluminium
30cm x 30cm £1,200
oil on aluminium (framed) 100cm x 150cm
£7,200 inc VAT
Boudoir 2020
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