ART FOR CHANGE and Prospect Park Alliance present Park of Dreams, a public art exhibition featuring larger-than-life work by leading New York-based contemporary artists, on view now through Spring 2024. Included in this exhibition is Brooklyn-based artist Jules de Balincourt.
Jules de Balincourt translates both personal and collective experiences into celebrated paintings that have been exhibited widely around the world. His work emerges from intuition, tapping into a personal interest in using paint—regarded by the artist as a primitive and archaic material—as a vehicle for transcribing images within the context of a rapidly developing technological age. De Balincourt frequently paints on board rather than canvas, giving the work a rough, raw texture, and uses an array of bright, rich colors. His works range from geometric and practically abstract to Pop-like figurative painting of Americana themes.
Jules de Balincourt’s Are You An Insider or Outsider is available for purchase at artforchange.com, with 5% of the purchase price, up to $15,000, of each limited edition print sold being donated to the Prospect Park Alliance. In keeping with all ART FOR CHANGE releases, artists will receive 50% of the net proceeds from each print sale.
A richly saturated scene of a park or garden by night, Are You An Insider or Outsider juxtaposes the nearly fluorescent contours of tall trees against a cluster of skyscrapers that spill across a surrounding cityscape. Details within the plants that inhabit this technicolor world are portrayed by varying shades of pinks and reds, additionally emphasized by dark shadows that bear the same tones as the inky, deep violet sky. Although the image is devoid of figures, human presence is insinuated by the placement of outdoor furniture within the garden, as well as the lit windows that dot the buildings in the foreground. The work is intended by Balincourt to depict the delicate relationship between urban and rural, as well as man’s relationship to both nature and the metropolis. In his own words, “I’ve always been interested in where the organic and the technological co-exist.”
On his participation in the exhibition, de Balincourt notes: “In the volatile environment we are currently living in, I feel that it is the artist's responsibility to contribute to important worthy causes such as the environment, civil rights, and other philanthropic initiatives.”
|
Before his recent show Midnight Movers at PACE Gallery, Jules de Balincourt sat down to discuss his process and the ways he explores various outside influences within his work. The artist explains that there are no preliminary drawings when beginning a work. He notes that toward the beginning of his process he “really just starts off with a blank canvas.” At first, it’s an abstract dance. Once the colors and shapes emerge, the artist describes that he will then either see or mine out an image that then becomes a loosely based image or element. De Balincourt highlights the “kinetic element or restlessness” within his paintings, as if searching for “a place of leisure or refuge.”
|