The Devil has all the best times: Tom Solty

Enari is proud to present Tom Solty’s first solo exhibition in the gallery space, titled The Devil has all the best times. This new body of work, created between May and August 2025, arises from a recurring rhythm of oscillation: moments of disorder followed by moments of calm. This cadence mirrors the wider condition of our time, a ‘new age’ shaped as much by natural chaos as by human intervention. To reflect on the world today is to acknowledge the consequences of our mere existence, of breathing the very air we have already altered. Yet these paintings are not solely about sadness, guilt, or conflict. They also serve as reminders of the value of simplicity.

The title, which was partly borrowed from the album by Prefab Sprout, points to a paradox: what is deemed immoral or excessive often feels the most alive, tempting, and irresistible. It captures the tension between duty and desire, restraint and indulgence. Solty’s works operate as visual bridges between imagination and reality, balancing natural phenomena with the artificial structures that surround and seduce us.

Speed, sound, and light run as undercurrents through this series of works, linking the artist’s ongoing research with painterly expression. Layered techniques lend the paintings a blurred, dreamlike quality, suspended between photographic memory and lived time. Oil paint forms the foundation, while airbrush interventions and diluted layers transform the surface, evoking the aesthetics of computer games and fairground imagery. This interplay between tradition and experimentation, between oil and airbrush, marks both an evolution of Solty’s practice and a reflection of the contemporary condition: a state in which the familiar and the fabricated, the disciplined and the excessive, coexist in perpetual tension.