Jules de Balincourt: Off the Beaten Path

June 3 - July 16, 2022
Lower Gallery

View the exhibition catalogue

"[In my work], you’re suddenly seduced and then you realize there’s something slightly uneasy... And that’s the reality of our world. It’s a fragile, unsettling place, especially in America after 9/11. There was a paradigm shift, there’s no doubt about it."
Jules de Balincourt

Jules de Balincourt: Off the Beaten Path highlights two significant early works. Painted at a moment when de Balincourt's visual vocabulary had come to full fruition, and his work had begun to garner worldwide acclaim, these works encapsulate the pervasive sense of paranoia at the time, when now-proven lies (weapons of mass destruction) were debated. Off the Beaten Path and Other Miscommunications and Untitled (Top or Bottom?), painted in 2006 and 2007, demonstrate de Balincourt’s trademark use of flattened color and space to suggest a sense of alienation engendered by modern society.

“Touted as ‘one of the leaders of the post 9/11 New York art scene,’ de Balincourt paints works that enchant on a level beyond trendiness... The fake security camera is a mischievous touch, too.”
Artscape Japan

A pair of security cameras flanks the paintings, heightening the sense of unreality — they are facsimiles made from paper, convincing from a distance but obviously fake up close — and implying a constant state of surveillance.