ILONA SZWARC

Field Resident, Mar 26 - May 7, 2023

OPEN STUDIOS : Saturday, April 29, 2023

ILONA’S PROJECT

I have been researching a new body of work around the notion of seasonal color analysis in the fashion and cosmetic industry developed in the 1980s. It is a process of finding colors of clothing and makeup to match a person’s skin complexion, eye color and hair color. Seasonal color analysis places individuals into four general categories: Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. This system is in fact color theory applied to a marketable service and product that is supposed to help women look their best. I am interested in the soft violence of the makeovers and the suffering as part of the apparatus of the perfect. I am excited about the potential of this subject as it relates to women, identity, capitalism and art. My goal during the residency is to experiment with photography, performance, installation and sculpture stemming out of further research around this topic.

Artist Biography

IIona Szwarc is an artist who works in photography, sculpture, and performance. She received an MFA in Photography from Yale University and a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in NYC. She explores themes of identity, transformation, and the dopplegänger - an inquiry rooted in her immigrant experience. Recent solo exhibitions include Diane Rosenstein Gallery (2021), Make Room (2019) and AALA Gallery (2018) in Los Angeles; and Fort Institute of Photography Foundation, Warsaw (2017). Recently, her work was included in group shows at Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York City; and Nicodim Gallery, Regen Projects, and Shulamit Nazarian Gallery in Los Angeles. Her photographs have been featured in numerous publications worldwide. Born in Warsaw, Poland, she now lives and works in Los Angeles.

Artist Statement

In "Virgin Soap", Polish-American artist Ilona Szwarc toys with power dynamics, photographing herself in the act of casting a lookalike model’s torso in plaster. Szwarc stands behind the model, a presence at once intimate and coercive. By playing both artist and photographer, voyeur and subject, Szwarc’s photographs explore what it is to observe oneself; to see oneself clearly through gaps produced by an unfamiliar familiarity. Virgin Soap uses rich visual language to build on Szwarc’s long-standing fascination with acts of transformation, doppelgangers, and the production of identity -- an inquiry rooted in Szwarc’s own immigrant background.