Observing Ilaz’s paintings, the impression is one of encountering a series of tormented figures: bodies that become phantasms, consumed and destroyed by an obsessive search for new experiences to enjoy, driven by the categorical imperative imposed by capitalist discourse.
The deep discomfort that emerges on the pictorial surface is a discomfort of the soul and psyche, insinuating and inscribing itself into corporeality. This follows in the footsteps of great masters of flesh such as Egon Schiele, Jean Fautrier, Francis Bacon, and Lucian Freud, who explored the delusions, aspirations, enchantments, frustrations, victories, and defeats of the human body. In the paintings of these artists, flesh was often seen as the receptacle of guilt, the forbidden, immorality, and disorder.
Today, however, bodies are, in a certain sense, called upon and forced to enjoy. The guilt now lies in not enjoying, in not experiencing pleasure. In our liquid, hyper-hedonistic society, nothing must escape, and it is this desperate condemnation that Ilaz conveys in her canvases. One is pushed to enjoy everything, but, returning once more to Nietzsche, the sense is missing; the answer to "why" is absent. Moreover, today the anticipation capable of eroticizing and nourishing sexuality, of vitalizing the real encounter of bodies, has completely disappeared. Eros and enjoyment are increasingly separated, deliberately distanced, leaving the subject in division and perennial dissatisfaction.
Text by Andrea Grotteschi, art curator, philosopher