Aftersun

Balazsi Gallery is pleased to present Aftersun, the first solo exhibition by Lydia Blakeley at the gallery, on view in Space 2 as part of Art Palma Summer.

This recent body of work extends an ongoing exploration of aspiration and escapism into a more intimate register, tracing the porous boundaries between desire, sensation, and embodiment. Through painting and photography, Blakeley investigates how the sensual operates as both an invitation and a threshold an unstable space where longing, memory, and the imagined self converge.

The works emerge as sites of negotiation, holding a subtle tension between what is yearned for and what remains just beyond reach. Within this vocabulary of intimacy, the sensory becomes a means to reconsider presence, vulnerability, and the architectures of the inner world. Aftersun gathers these works into a tranquil meditation on the lingering sensations that follow moments of exposure whether to sunlight, leisure, or deeply embodied experience. Across the series, lush botanical abundance, softened human and animal forms, and familiar objects of recreation are rendered with a heightened stillness, as though suspended in the gentle afterglow of memory.

The recurring use of enclosed spaces and delicately romanticised surfaces suggests both intimacy and distance, framing bodies and objects as if recalled rather than directly observed. In this way, the works navigate a threshold between presence and recollection, where tactile immediacy gradually dissolves into atmosphere.

Rather than focusing on the events of leisure themselves, Aftersun reflects on their residue: the warmth retained in the body, the quietude that follows, and the subtle persistence of sensory experience. The exhibition ultimately proposes a contemplative space in which memory, sensation, and imagination softly intertwine.