Jules de Balincourt. One Island Many People

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2 Jules de Balincourt One Island Many People

3 Udbryderkongen Jules de Balincourt Vi lever i en dystopisk syndflods tid. I en tid, hvor modstandsbevægelsen kæmper mod en tegneserieskurk, præsident Donald Trump, der, for at bruge hans politiske rådgiver Kellyanne Conways forlorne udtryk, anvender alterna tive facts til at slå dragen fake news ihjel. I en tid, hvor den forstemmende opfattelse af, at vi gennemlever et autoritært mareridt parret med en kvindehadets teonomi, er blevet kan man sige deprimerende populær. Som forberedelse til verdens kommende undergang rives bøger som George Orwells 1984, Philip Roths Komplottet mod Amerika og Margaret Atwoods Tjenerindens fortælling ned fra hylderne, mens tv-serier og film som The Leftovers, Get Out og The Hunger Games faldbyder stadigt grummere apokalyptiske fortællinger. For bedre at forstå den nuværende dystopi-fiksering, gør vi klogt i at lytte til den romantiske digter William Wordsworth. Ligesom i andre letantændelige transnationale perioder, som f.eks. begyndelsen af den industrielle revolution eller de gadekæmpende, sene 1960 ere, kan verden i dag siges at være too much with us. Disse og andre flygtige tanker strejfede mig, da jeg betragtede en snes billeder af maleren Jules de Balincourt, født i Frankrig, opvokset i Californien og bosiddende i New York. På væggene i hans atelier i Brooklyn hang der forskellige eksempler på, hvad kunstneren har beskrevet som utvivlsomt eskapistiske rejsebilleder. Det er oliemalerier på træ; de fremstiller, blandt andre drømmeagtige scenerier, tropiske strande, Robinson Crusoe-agtige øer, en sejlbåd, junglelandskaber, der på filmisk vis forvandles til ansigter (som i en filmmontage) og grupper af skikkelser, der bevæger sig hen over mørke og syrede farveområder, ligesom grupper af koncertgængere, der er på udkig efter en måde at komme hjem på (alternativt kunne de være flygtninge). De Balincourt må, som den erfarne leverandør af modsætningsfuldt fængslende og ildevarslende syn på kulturel opløsning han er, siges at kunne bestå F. Scott Fizgeralds intelligensprøve med glans: Som en kunstner, der mestrer at rumme to modstridende ideer i hovedet på én gang, har han intuitivt og støt overført sin egen fremmedgørelse fra og affektion for jordiske ting til sine neo romantiske malerier. Hans seneste værker rammer én som hedeture: Det fug tige førstehåndsindtryk glider over i vellystig refleksion, uden at følges af det ildevarslendes feberdrøm. Med Nietzsches formulering antyder de Balincourts gentagne afbildninger af paradiset, at i himlen er alle de interessante mennesker fraværende. Eller som kunstneren selv har sagt det til mig: Jeg er interesseret i at male utopiske scener, der udspiller sig på et dystopisk sted. De Balincourts malerier begynder som abstrakte farvede former, der er svang re med tilsynekomster og road trips. Formerne kommer til syne inde fra områder af udtyndede farvenuancer, som generelt udgør de første lag i hans smukke kompositioner. Anden eller tredje gang, siger han, ser jeg som regel et billede, som jeg forfølger. I praktisk forstand minder de Balincourts omgang med maling om Michelangelos omgang med stenen. Sidstnævnte erklærede som bekendt, at formen på hans skulptur allerede befandt sig inde i marmorblokken, før han satte sin mejsel til stenen. De Balincourt vil sikkert bekræfte noget tilsvarende. F.eks. kan de Ozymandias-agtige blå kvindehoveder, der dominerer The Promise, ses som allerede værende indeholdt i de Balincourts farvefulde lag. Det samme gælder de centralt placerede sil huetfigurer, der bebor hans skibbrudte ø i They Found Refuge. De Balincourt indrømmer, at hans seneste malerier har ret meget at gøre med et nyere livsprojekt. Det er slet ikke tilfældigt, at kunstneren står midt i at bygge et atelier og kunstnerrefugium i kystbyen Malpais i Costa Rica. På trods af byens dramatisk ildevarslende navn på spansk betyder mal país dårligt land er kunstneren i øjeblikket optændt af en knap så metaforisk flugt fra verdens tiltagende, dystopiske roteren, og det han kalder den ame rikanske kunstboble. Hans malerier især det frodige sejlbådsmotiv, der dominerer Adrift, og hans billede af forskellige, halvt påklædte strandede grupper, som han har givet titlen Those Who Left and Those Who Stay antyder snarere dialektiske end modstridende impulser. Hvis hans malerier visualiserer ønsket om at være et andet sted, udtrykker de også massiv angst for, hvad der efterlades. Ifølge overleveringen blev Edgar Allen Poes Ravnen reciteret under den middag, der blev afholdt til ære for Gauguin, før han drog af sted til Tahiti. Gauguin malede senere et anspændt portræt af sin liggende vahiné sin tahitianske hustru hvori han inkluderede denne djævlefugl, og gav det titlen Nevermore (1897). De Balincourts seneste oliemalerier rummer en lignende spænding. De fremmaner fundne og tabte paradiser såvel som landskaber og skikkelser, der veksler mellem at antyde en hovedkulds flugt til Ægypten og løftet om nye begyndelser. Men ud fra de omhyggelige studier af de Balincourts seneste idealistiske skønheder er der frem for alt én ting at tage med sig. Dette er ikke billeder, der er skabt for at flygte fra virkeligheden. De er malet for at overveje at blive. Christian Viveros-Fauné Brooklyn, oktober 2018

4 One Island Many People, 2018 [JDB ]

5 Towards the Beach, 2018 [JDB ]

6 Those Who Left and Those Who Stay, 2018 [JDB ]

7 Father Land, 2018 [JDB ] Sea Dreams, 2018 [JDB ]

8 (City at Night), 2018 [JDB ]

9 Cone Control, 2018 [JDB ]

10 Adrift, 2018 [JDB ]

11 Jungleboy, 2018 [JDB ] On the Road off the Road, 2018 [JDB ]

12 Trail of the Lost but Found, 2018 [JDB ]

13 Lost in Jungle, 2018 [JDB ] Seeing and Being Seen, 2018 [JDB ]

14 Possible Worlds, 2018 [JDB ]

15 Jules de Balincourt: The Escape Artist We live in age of dystopian deluge. At a time when The Resistance battles a comic book villain President Donald Trump who deploys, to use his political advisor Kellyanne Conway s bogus term, alternative facts to slay the dragon of so-called fake news, the distressing perception that we are living through an authoritarian nightmare crossed with a misogynist theonomy has become, well, depressingly popular. In preparation for the coming end times, books like George Orwell s 1984, Philip Roth s The Plot Against America and Margaret Atwood s The Handmaid s Tale are flying off the shelves, while TV series and movies like The Leftovers, Get Out and The Hunger Games peddle ever grimmer apocalyptic narratives. To better understand the current dystopia fixation, we would do well to take a page from the Romantic poet William Wordsworth. Like other combustible transnational periods, say, the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and the street-fighting late 1960s, today the world is arguably too much with us. These and other fugitive thoughts occurred to me as I surveyed more than a dozen paintings by the French-born, California-raised, New York-based painter Jules de Balincourt. Arrayed around the walls of his Brooklyn studio were various examples of what the artist has described as admittedly escapist travel pictures. paintings, they depict, among other dreamy images, tropical beach scenes, views of Robinson Crusoe-like islands, a sailing boat, jungle landscapes that morph cinematically into faces (as in a film montage) and groups of figures toing and froing across dark-and-acid-colored terrains like tribes of concertgoers searching for a ride home (alternately, they could be refugees). A long time purveyor of conflictingly fetching and ominous views of cultural anomie, de Balincourt has long been capable of acing the F. Scott Fitzgerald IQ test. An artist who excels at holding two opposed ideas in the mind at once, he has intuitively and steadily transferred his own estrangement from and affection for worldly things onto his neo-romantic paintings. His latest works arrive like hot flashes: humid first impressions subside into sultry reflection, while avoiding portentousness fever dream. In Nietzsche s formulation, de Balincourt s repeated views of Eden suggest that, in heaven, all the interesting people are missing. Or as the artist himself put it to me: I am interested in painting utopian scenes that play out in a dystopian place. De Balincourt s paintings start out as abstract shapes of color pregnant with apparitions and road trips. These emerge from within fields of thinned out hues that, generatively speaking, make up the first layers of his handsome compositions. By the second or third session, he says, I usually see an image, which I follow. In practical terms, de Balincourt s approach with paint recalls that of Michelangelo in sculpture. The latter famously declared that the final form of his sculpture was already contained within his marble block before he put chisel to stone. De Balincourt might easily affirm something similar. The Ozymandias-like blue female head that dominates The Promise, for in stance, can be said to be immanently contained within de Balincourt s colorful washes. Ditto for the centrally placed silhouetted figures that inhabit his shipwrecked island in They Found Refuge. De Balincourt s latest raft of paintings, he confesses, have a great deal to do with a recent life project. Not at all coincidentally, the artist is in the midst of building a studio and artists retreat in the coastal town of Malpais in Costa Rica. Despite the town s dramatically baleful name in Spanish the words mal país mean bad country the artist is currently consumed by a not so metaphorical escape from the world s advancing dystopian churn and what he calls the American art world bubble. His paintings, especially the lush sailboat image that dominates Adrift and his picture of several beached groups of half-dressed figures he has titled Those Who Left and Those Who Stay, suggest dialectical rather than contradictory impulses. If his paintings visualize the wish to be elsewhere, they also channel loads of anxiety about what is left behind. According to art lore, the dinner held in honor of Gauguin before he left for Tahiti included a recitation of Edgar Allen Poe s The Raven. Later, the painter included an image of that bird of the devil in an uneasy portrait of his supine vahiné, or Tahitian wife, which he titled Nevermore (1897). De Balincourt s recent oils partake of a similar tension. They invoke both paradises gained and lost, as well as landscapes and figures that toggle between suggesting a headlong flight into Egypt and the promise of new beginnings. But one takeaway, above all others, emerges from careful study of de Balincourt s latest idealistic beauties. These are not pictures made so much to escape reality. They are painted to consider staying. Christian Viveros-Fauné Brooklyn, October 2018

16 Night Watch, 2018 [JDB ] They Found Refuge, 2018 [JDB ]

17 A Horse with No Name, 2018 [JDB ]

18 The Promise, 2018 [JDB ]

19 Jules de Balincourt Born 1972 in Paris, France. Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, US. Education 2005 MFA, Hunter College, New York, NY, US 2011 Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, Thaddaeus Ropac, 2015 Jules de Balincourt, Stephan Balkenhol, Alex Katz, 2011 Bridgehampton Biennial, Curated by Bob Nickas, 1998 BFA, California College of Arts and Craft, San Paris, France Monica de Cardenas, Zuos, Switzerland Martos Gallery, Bridgehampton, US Francisco, CA, US 2010 Premonitions, Deitch Projects, New York, US Metropolis: Paintings of the Contemporary Urban New York Minute, Garage Center for Contemporary Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan Landscape, curated by David Ebony, Edward Tyler Culture, Moscow, Russia Works in collections 2008 Malpais, Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, Paris, France Nahem Fine Art,New York, US Facemaker, curated by Kathy Grayson, Royal/T, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery, Nashville, Space Age, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin, France Los Angeles, CA, US Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy TN, US Years, Arndt, Berlin, Germany 2010 Not Yet Finished The Hole, New York, US Oppenheimer JCCC Collection for the Nerman Museum of 2007 Unknowing Man s Nature, Zach Feuer Gallery, 2014 Eurasia: A view on painting, Galerie Thaddaeus Looking Back / The Fifth White Columns Annual, Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas, US New York, US Ropac, Paris, France selected by Bob Nickas, White Columns, New York, US Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, US Allweweresayingwasgivepeaceachance, Mario Another Place, 205 Hudson Street Gallery, Hunter The Cannibal s Muse, curated by Max Henry Patricia Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, US Diacono at Ars Libri, Boston, US College, New York, US Low Contemporary, Geneva Switzerland Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, US 2006 Accidental Tourism and the Art of Forgetting, Arndt Duro Olowu: More Material, Salon 94 Bowery, New The Secret Lives of Trees, Monica de Cardenas, MaRT, Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e and Partner, Berlin, Germany York, US Milan, Italy Rovereto, Rovereto, Italy 2005 This is Our Town, Zach Feuer Gallery (LFL), New York, 2013 LAT N., LONG W, cur. Bob Nickas, th Havana Biennial, Museo Nacional de Bellas Musée départemental d art contemporain de Rochechouart, US Martos Gallery, New York, US Artes, Havana, Cuba Rochechouart, France 2004 Armory Show / LFL Gallery, New York, US Something About a Tree, cur. Linda Yablonsky, Flag Mixing It Up: Recent Hunter MFAs Working in Com 2003 Land of Many Uses, LFL Gallery, New York, US Art Foundation, New York, US bined Media, The Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Solo Exhibitions Allston Skirt Gallery, Boston, US La Belle Peinture II/ Pekná mal ba II, organized by Gallery at HunterCollege, New York, US 2018 One Island Many People, Galleri Bo Bjerggaard, 2000 Space 743, San Francisco, CA, US L Institut Français de Slovaquie, Palais Pisztory, Return to Function, Madison Museum of Contempo Copenhagen, DK 1999 Perch Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA, US Bratislava,Slovakia rary Art, Madison, WI, US They Cast Long Shadows, Victoria Miro, London, UK 1998 Soapbox Gallery, Venice, CA, US Cinematic Visions Painting at the Edge of Reality, Transitions. Painting at the (other) End of Art, Colle 2017 We Come Together at Night, Galerie Thaddaeus curated by Glenn Scott Wright, James Franco and zione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy Ropac, Salzburg, Austria Group Exhibitions Isaac Julien,Victoria Miro, London Cave Painting, PSM, Berlin Germany and Gresham s 2016 Stumbling Pioneers, Victoria Miro, London, UK 2017 The New Frontiers of Painting, Fondazione Stelline, Brooklyn Artists Ball, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, US Ghost, New York, US 2015 As Far West As We Could Go, Kasseler KunstVerein, Milan, Italy L Ange de l Histoire, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, New York Minute, MACRO Museum of Contemporary Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany Art Turns. World Turns. Exploring the Collection of Palais des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France Art, Rome, Italy 2014 FOCUS: Jules de Balincourt, The Modern Art Museum the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Disaster / The End of Days, curated by Séverine FUTURESCAPE: Making of the Super City, Contempo of Fort Worth, TX, US ( ) Nusan tara,museum MACAN, Jacarta, Indonesia Wealchli and Michael Bracewell, Galerie Thaddaeus rary Art Galleries, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Misfit Island, Rochechouart Museum of Contemporary Déjeuner sur l herbe, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Ropac, Paris-Pantin, France CT, US Art, Rochechouart, France Paris, France Chicken or Beef?, The Hole, New York, US STAGES, Deitch Projects, New York, US Blue Hours, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, France House Work, Victoria Miro, London, UK 2012 Painting as Radical Form, Collezione Maramotti, 2008 Mail Order Monsters, Max Wigram Gallery, London 2013 Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada 2016 The Universe and Art, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Reggio Emilia, Italy 21: Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum, The Itinerant Ones, Victoria Miro, London, UK Japan; ArtScience Museum, Singapore ( ) Pothole, Salon 94 Bowery, New York, US Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, US 2012 Ecstatic Contact, Salon 94 Bowery, New York, NY Flowers in your hair, Fused Space, San Francisco, 2011 We Regret to Inform You, Martos Gallery, New York, Future Tense: Reshaping the Landscape, Neuberger Parallel Universe, Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, CA, US US Museum of Art, Purchase, New York, US Italy Protest, Victoria Miro, London, UK Visions, Galleria Monica De Cardenas, Milan, Italy I want a little sugar in my bowl, Asia Song Society, An Honest Statement, Espace Louis Vuitton, Hong New York, US Kong, China

20 Recent Acquisitions, Gifts, and Works from Various Exhibitions , White Columns, New York, US Eastern Standard, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, US Cynicism vs. Hope, Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York, US 2007 USA TODAY, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia Artists of Invention: A Century of CCA, Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA, US Past, Present, Future Perfect: Selections from the Ovitz Family Collection, H+R Block Artspace, Kansas City, Missouri Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation, National Art Museum of China, Beijing 10 February 5 April 2007, Organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Terra Foundation for American Art; travelling to Shanghai Museum, 1 May 30 June, 2007; Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, 24 July 9 September 2007; Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain, 8 October April 2008 Phantasmania, Kemper Art Museum, Kansas City, MO, US Poets on Painters, Ulrich Museum, Wichita, KS, US Prague Biennial 3, Prague, Czech Republic Five Painters, Galleri Loyal, Stockholm, Sweden When We Build Let Us Think That We Build Forever, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom The Stuff What We Bought (Selected Purchases 2007), Archeus, London, UK 2006 USA TODAY, Royal Academy of Art, London, UK New York Contemporary: Art Times Squared, Hangart 7, Salzburg, Austria Our Town, HUT Hudson Untitled Foundation, Hudson, US Reverence, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, US Collection 2005/06, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, Belgium Metro Pictures, The Moore Space, Miami, FL, US Down By Law, Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, US Don t Abandon the Ship, Allston Skirt Gallery, Boston, MA, US Humor Me, H+R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO, US Notre histoire Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France 2005 Greater New York, PS1/MOMA, Queens, US 2004 Trunk of Humors, Deitch Projects, New York, US 4 und 4, Muller DeChiara, Berlin, Germany The Dreamland Artist Club, Creative Time / Coney Island, New York, US True Stories, Johnson County Community College Art Gallery, Overland Park, KS, US Collection (or How I Spent a Year), PS1/MOMA, New York, US Rowdy Remix, ATM Gallery, New York, US American Stars n Bars, Chapman University Guggenheim Gallery, Orange, CA, US 2003 Summer Jam, Peres Projects, Los Angeles, CA, US College Art Association MFA Selection Exhibition, New York, US Today s Man, John Connelly Presents, New York, US My people were fair and had cum in their hair (but now they re content to spray stars from your boughs), TeamGallery, New York, US 2002 Brooklyn Front, Other Routes (Mixed Greens), Brooklyn, US Art Hut, Nutty, San Francisco, CA, US 1999 Southern Exposure, 15th Annual Hospitality House, San Francisco, CA, US Devil's Island, 2018 [JDB ]

21 Jules de Balincourt One Island Many People 2 November January 2019 Works / Værker Trail of the Lost but Found, x 122 cm JDB Sea Dreams, x 76,5 cm JDB Seeing and Being Seen, x 76,5 cm JDB Cone Control, x 76,5 cm JDB Lost in Jungle, x 76,5 cm JDB The Promise, x 76,5 cm JDB Towards the Beach, ,5 x 25,5 cm JDB A Horse with No Name, ,5 x 25,5 cm JDB Adrift, x 76,5 cm JDB Father Land, x 51 cm JDB Night Watch, x 51 cm JDB On the Road off the Road, x 51 cm JDB Those Who Left and Those Who Stay, x 112 cm JDB Possible Worlds, x 102 cm JDB (City at Night), ,5 x 25,5 cm JDB Jungleboy, x 41 cm JDB They Found Refuge, x 51 cm JDB Devil's Island, ,5 x 25,5 cm JDB One Island Many People, x 122 cm JDB

22 FLÆSKETORVET 85 A The artist & Galleri Bo Bjerggaard ISBN Photos by Farzad Owrang Thanks to Christian Viveros-Fauné Thanks to Rosendahls Translation English to Danish: Wordmaster DK 1711 KØBENHAVN V TEL BJERGGAARD@BJERGGAARD.COM TUESDAY-FRIDAY 1 PM 6 PM SATURDAY 12 PM 4 PM

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