Jules de Balincourt

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Jules de Balincourt (born 1972 in Paris) is a French painter. He was educated at the California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco receiving a BFA (1998) and went on to study at the Hunter College, New York graduating in 2005 with an MFA. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York

His work has been exhibited at several prominent international galleries and museums including Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris [1] and Palais de Tokyo [2] in Paris, and has been featured in several high profile exhibitions including, “Greater New York” at the PS1 Center for Contemporary Art [3] and MOMA [4] in New York, and “USA Today” [5] at The Royal Academy [6] in London. His work is in several prominent collections, including the Oppenheimer – JCCC Collection for the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art [7], and the Saatchi Gallery [8]. He is represented by Zach Feuer Gallery [9] in New York.

Jules de Balincourt’s paintings and sculptures both espouse and critique superpower culture. Born in France and now living in Brooklyn, de Balincourt draws fictional parodies of Americana, picturing a spoof nation that’s both foreign and familiar. Through his faux-naif style, de Balincourt creates a humorous reportage, inventing a contemporary anthropology based on media representation, political dissent and blue-collar ethics.

De Balincourt disseminates his ironic treatise through appropriated media devices. Mimicking the design of textbook illustrations, Second World War newsreel footage, and 1950s film stills, de Balincourt plays on the sensational innuendo of government-sanctioned entertainment and its underlying use as an ideological weapon. Maps are reordered to propagate geographical ignorance, familiar typefaces spell out impending doom, and symbolic political colours shift uncomfortably between republican pride and the nostalgia of communist threat.

Quoting Pop art, graffiti and the iconic Grandma Moses, de Balincourt’s populist approach to painting offers a licence for his witty and apocalyptic social commentary. His attenuate formalism belies his sly knowingness, adding a layered complexity to his satirical narratives. Using the qualities of Outsider art as a synonym for American values, his ‘amateurish’ style replicates the heritage of grass-roots enthusiasm and democratic freedom. De Balincourt trades the hierarchy of painterly ‘sophistication’ for the easy-sell of homely aesthetics: bright tones, bold shapes and cartoonish forms mimic propaganda instruction for the lowest common denominator.