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Lot Essay
Looming more than two metres in height, Floating through it (2010) is a vivid, compelling landscape painting by Jules de Balincourt. A broad turquoise river snakes its way between brilliant green and orange banks; it is dotted with rafts full of people, receding in scale towards a cavernous pictorial distance. Framed by branches of dark leaves, the picture places the viewer amid the undergrowth, watching the scene below from a subtly voyeuristic vantage point. Up close, we can see a man dragging a dinghy onto the luminous shore, and people gathered at a picnic table: they are regarded by two fishermen on the opposite bank, and some rafters who have just made it over the rapids. For all its paradisiacal glow, the scene is rich in narrative detail and uncanny, cinematic tension. Organised fun and natural wilderness, adventure and danger, the primal power of group dynamics: undercurrents and intrigues surge through the painting, exemplifying de Balincourt’s interest in ‘spaces and places that teeter between a utopian Eden and the post-apocalyptic’ (J. de Balincourt quoted in M. Dzama, ‘Searching the Wave of Possibility’, Juxtapoz, December 2017).
De Balincourt, who was born in Paris in 1972, lived in Ibiza, Zurich and California during his childhood, primarily growing up near Malibou Lake in the Santa Monica Mountains. Today based in New York, his travels continue to inform his work: he frequently visits Costa Rica to pursue a passion for surfing, which might be seen to inform the watery thrill-ride of the present painting. California, with its vibrant and varied scenery, provides a particular inspiration as a flashpoint for man’s uncertain relationship to nature, and the constructed myths of the American frontier that inform both individual and national identity. ‘I guess I felt perpetually like an outsider looking in—and I still do’, he says. ‘I think it’s important because it enables me to look at things objectively. It’s almost like being a cultural anthropologist’ (J. de Balincourt quoted in E. Spicer, ‘Jules de Balincourt’, Studio International, 3 May 2016).
Working directly and intuitively, with no preparatory drawings, de Balincourt values accessibility and free association in his paintings. While he is informed by the work of artists such as Alex Katz, Peter Doig, David Hockney and Paul Gauguin, he does not engage in abstruse concepts or formal dialogues with art history. ‘I’m just sort of bouncing through life and the world,’ he says of his subject matter. ‘… I’m also continually exploring themes of escape, communities on the margins, failed utopias, travel and leisure’ (J. de Balincourt, quoted in Y. Wallin, ‘Painting the World: Q+A With Jules de Balincourt’, Art in America, 17 June 2011). Psychedelic, romantic and spiked with disquiet, Floating through it is alive with his wry, wide-ranging sensitivity to the natural and social environments of modern life.
De Balincourt, who was born in Paris in 1972, lived in Ibiza, Zurich and California during his childhood, primarily growing up near Malibou Lake in the Santa Monica Mountains. Today based in New York, his travels continue to inform his work: he frequently visits Costa Rica to pursue a passion for surfing, which might be seen to inform the watery thrill-ride of the present painting. California, with its vibrant and varied scenery, provides a particular inspiration as a flashpoint for man’s uncertain relationship to nature, and the constructed myths of the American frontier that inform both individual and national identity. ‘I guess I felt perpetually like an outsider looking in—and I still do’, he says. ‘I think it’s important because it enables me to look at things objectively. It’s almost like being a cultural anthropologist’ (J. de Balincourt quoted in E. Spicer, ‘Jules de Balincourt’, Studio International, 3 May 2016).
Working directly and intuitively, with no preparatory drawings, de Balincourt values accessibility and free association in his paintings. While he is informed by the work of artists such as Alex Katz, Peter Doig, David Hockney and Paul Gauguin, he does not engage in abstruse concepts or formal dialogues with art history. ‘I’m just sort of bouncing through life and the world,’ he says of his subject matter. ‘… I’m also continually exploring themes of escape, communities on the margins, failed utopias, travel and leisure’ (J. de Balincourt, quoted in Y. Wallin, ‘Painting the World: Q+A With Jules de Balincourt’, Art in America, 17 June 2011). Psychedelic, romantic and spiked with disquiet, Floating through it is alive with his wry, wide-ranging sensitivity to the natural and social environments of modern life.