Victoria Miro is delighted to present Jules de Balincourt's Itinerant Ones, the first solo exhibition in the UK for the Paris-born, New York- based painter.

Known for his carefully constructed paintings that move effortlessly between abstraction and figuration, the imagined and the real, this new body of work sees De Balincourt moving away from direct references to current social, political or popular culture, and instead depicting a world in which indications of specific place or time are absent. Although the works are diverse in subject matter, throughout the exhibition a poetics of freeassociation lends the images a certain universal familiarity.

De Balincourt's process involves various techniques - including stencilling, masking, abrading and watercolour-like oil washes - creating an apparently seamless vision. Exhibited across two floors of the gallery, the paintings here range in scale from the tablet-sized Boardwalk Barter a reminiscence from the artist's earlier years selling his work in Venice, California, to one of his signature, immersive flower-like explosions, which can be read as either the conceptual origin or the end point of all other work.

In works such as the cityscape High and Low, the acid-bright leisure scene BBQ sur l'herbe, and the painting from which the show takes its title, Itinerant Ones, De Balincourt zooms out of specific culture into a more global gaze. Juxtapositions of works such as Firepeople and Visionquest, where figures come together in hopes of spiritual enlightenment, with Alex, an intimate portrayal of a friend on the beach, locate De Balincourt's interest in both personal and social depictions of humanity.

This body of work takes the viewer on a journey - an escape - into a realm populated by small communities gathering, converging, or seeking solace or refuge. They may appear cradled by a strange nature, or searching for protection from an ambiguous threat. De Balincourt's scenes come to signify a desire for leisure or reprieve from within a vulnerable and ever-changing landscape, whether physical or psychological. He paints a restless world both in form and content, perhaps suggesting that we are instead the itinerant ones of the show's title.

Jules de Balincourt was born in Paris in 1972 and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. De Balincourt's work has been the subject of a number of international solo exhibitions at institutions including the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, 2010 and the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery, Nashville, TN, USA. His work has also been included in a number of significant group exhibitions including: L'Ange de l'Histoire, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud at le Palais des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 2013, New York Minute, Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow, 2011, New York Minute, MACRO, Rome, 2009, the 10th Havana Biennial, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Cuba, 2009, 21: Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn New York, 2008, USA Today at the Royal Academy, London and Hermitage, St Petersburg, 2007 - 2008, the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2006, and Greater New York, at MoMA / PS1, New York, 2005.

Victoria Miro Gallery
16 Wharf Road
London N1 7RW United Kingdom
Ph. +44 (0)20 73368109
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Related images

  • 1., 2. & 3. Installation, Jules de Balincourt | Itinerant Ones, Victoria Miro Gallery, London, Photography: Stephen White
  • 4. Jules de Balincourt, Itinerant Ones (detail), 2013, Oil and acrylic on panel, 243.8 x 243.8 x 6.3 cm, 96 x 96 x 2 1/2 in, Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro, London, © Jules de Balincourt
  • 5. Jules de Balincourt, Exodus, 2013, Acrylic oil and oil stick on panel, 243.8 x 167.6 cm, 96 x 66 in, Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro, London, © Jules de Balincourt
  • 6. Jules de Balincourt, BBQ sur l'herbe, 2013, Oil and acrylic on panel, 121.9 x 86.4 x 5.1 cm, 48 x 34 x 2 in, Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro, London, © Jules de Balincourt