ART: Jules de Balincourt at a Hong Kong gallery

(Above: Beautiful Storm, 2022 Courtesy of the Artist © Jules de Balincourt)

Pace is pleased to present an exhibition of 12 recent paintings by Jules de Balincourt at its Hong Kong gallery. The show marks the artist’s first solo exhibition with Pace since he joined the gallery in 2021. This is also de Balincourt’s first solo presentation in Hong Kong since 2012.

Paintings in the show span landscape and figuration. Rendered in rich colors at large- and small scales, these works reflect de Balincourt’s interest in using the canvas to merge his own psychological landscape with external, global landscapes. In his practice, de Balincourt often explores the relationships between humanity and the natural world. The artist, who takes an intuitive, stream of consciousness approach to painting, imbues much of his work with mystery and ambiguity.

Several pieces in Birds on a Boat feature groupings of de Balincourt’s transient, nomadic figures situated amid formidable trees, churning coastlines, and other natural settings that the artist injects with otherworldly and fantastical qualities. In these works, the artist has said, it’s unclear whether the diminutive figures have found themselves in these environments “out of leisure or out of desperation.” For viewers, the wind, rain, and other natural forces depicted in these paintings are visceral and deeply felt.

New Arrivals, 2021, oil on panel, 78-3/4″ × 65″ × 2-1/2″ (200 cm × 165.1 cm × 6.4 cm), Courtesy of the Artist © Jules de Balincourt

“In a lot of this work you really feel the earthiness within the paintings. I want to convey the physicality of the natural elements, such as the wind, the plants, the rain,” the artist has said of his landscapes. “It’s about these really basic, earthy elements, and our relationship and our vulnerability, as we attempt to coexist in a constant flux.”

Other works in the exhibition feature nude male figures. Depicting torsos, arms, and obscured faces, these works blur the boundary between abstraction and figuration. Limbs and abdomens converge with their surroundings, and the artist positions his figures at a crossroads between full representation and abstraction. Like de Balincourt’s landscapes, these works defy easy narrative ascription or categorization.

Formally engaged with the work of artists like Arthur Dove and Milton Avery, as well as the traditions of Fauvism and German Expressionism, de Balincourt’s paintings can be understood as vehicles into exploring the subconscious. Rife with expressions of fragility, vulnerability, imbalance, and precarity, these works take up timely motifs and ideas.

Jules de Balincourt is known internationally for colorful, radiant paintings that meditate on the social, political, and cultural dynamics of an increasingly globalized world.

Born in Paris in 1972, Jules de Balincourt is currently based in Brooklyn, New York and Malpais, Costa Rica. The artist graduated from the California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco in 1998 and earned a Master of Fine Arts at Hunter College, New York in 2005. He later ran the Brooklyn–based community and events center Starr Space. In 2009, the artist’s work figured in the 10th Havana Biennial at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. In 2021, de Balincourt presented his first solo exhibition in Spain, titled After The Gold Rush, at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Málaga. That show, which was curated by Helena Juncosa, featured a selection of works created by the artist in the last decade.

The artist has previously been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Kasseler Kunstverein, Kassel, Germany; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; and elsewhere. His work can be found in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada; the Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy; the Rochechouart Museum of Contemporary Art, France; and other institutions around the world.