Aline ZALKO Fire!

From 5 to 28 May 2022, the Les Arts dessinés gallery is delighted to be hosting Fire!, an ambitious retrospective exhibition of the work of Paris-born artist Aline Zalko ? a total of thirty-two colourful landscapes and female portraits.

Aline Zalko signed her first contracts, launching her career as an illustrator, in New York. Her drawings were first published in the New York Times, when she was studying at the city?s School of Visual Arts, and went on to appear in other press publications (Le Figaro, Le Fooding, Télérama, Zadig, Le Monde), in book form (Flammarion, Fayard) and in advertising (Havas). Alongside this commissioned work, Aline Zalko has also been producing drawings of her own inspiration. Ever prolific, she showed her work at the Salon de Montrouge in 2013 and at the Galerie Dérouillon, in Paris, in 2014, and collaborated with the contemporary drawing fair Drawing Now in 2015, the Galerie du Jour Agnès B. (Paris) on an exhibition focusing on the contemporary drawing magazine The Drawer (2015), and Paris?s Galerie Arts Factory in 2017.

Zalko uses a whole range of techniques, from colour pencil to pastels and ink on paper, to bring out the full beauty of her material, selecting her technique depending on the subject matter and readily exploring new stylistic approaches. She enjoys using colour pencil for its ?earthiness? and leans heavily on the pencil to achieve an intense effect, while favouring acrylics for her large-format paintings because of its quick drying time.

Zalko?s strong colours and vivid style of working produce exuberant landscapes and female portraits that are truly astonishing. ?Ephemerality and metamorphosis are central [to my work],? she tells us, ?together with a predilection for female representations in pop and pulp culture, portraits of children and teenagers, obsolete objects, depictions of the power of nature and a certain fascination with fire.?

Private view: Thursday 12 May 2022, from 6.00 pm to 9.00 pm, in the presence of the artist