Jules de Balincourt, b 1972 in Paris, France, lives and works in New York, USA

De Balincourt’s painting can be interpreted on several different levels. The image is always an encounter and an invitation to escape, going from pure utopia to dystopia. De Balincourt moves through space, zooming in on details that attract his attention, as what he himself calls “a tourist of globalisation who consumes culture visually and intellectually and conveys or disseminates his personal visions by means of images.” As our gaze moves around these interior images that are like archives of the artist’s visions, it is up to us to constitute an imaginary world based on these selected fragments. We go from abstract elements to figurative details, experiencing a great sense of energy and intense feelings, but where one painting offers harmony, another may slide into chaos.

Jules de Balincourt is interested in the twofold, physical and metaphysical properties of the images that surround us. They are taken from political, social or religious contexts and endowed with a new coherence by the artist, who makes the most of their paradoxes. In some of the canvases, the real is dissolved by pixellisation, evoking another way in which everyday images are appropriated in the digital age.

EXHIBITIONS