Tender Command

Tender Command A solo exhibition

by Ilona Szalay

Ilona 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) 60cm x 40cm £950 inc VAT

Bird Boy 2016 oil paint on glass (framed) 53cm x 43cm £2,800 inc VAT

Boudoir Pose 2024 oil on found frame 50cm x 60cm £1,800 inc VAT

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

Currenly at Paul Smith, Albemarle Street

Dressing 2016 oil and resin on wood (framed) 50cm x 40cm £1,800 inc VAT

Enchantress 2020 oil on paper (framed) 59cm x 84cm £2,800 inc VAT

Implements of Seduction 2019 aluminium (framed) 53cm x 43cm £2,800 inc VAT

My Dear Ghost 2019 oil on aluminium (framed), 53cm x 43cm £3,000 inc VAT

Currenly at Paul Smith, Albemarle Street

Pool 2017 oil and resin on wood (framed) 60cm x 60cm £1,800 inc VAT

Currenly at Paul Smith, Albemarle Street

Red Gloves 2018 oil on aluminium (framed) 63cm x 83cm £3,000 inc VAT

Repairs 2021 oil on aluminium 30cm x 30cm £1,200 inc VAT

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 inc VAT

Boudoir 2020 oil on aluminium (framed) 100cm x 150cm £7,200 inc VAT

For all art enquiries please contact: art@paulsmith.co.uk Katie Heller Art & Exhibitions Manager +44 (0)7553 352 959 +44 (0) 207 493 4565 katie.heller@paulsmith.co.uk Brontë Crouch Arts and Interiors Consultant +44 (0) 207 493 4565 bronte.crouch@paulsmith.co.uk

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