Jules de Balincourt’s work has been written about consistently for the past five years and images of his work are widely available. You will find mixed reviews about the current show from several sources, but most agree that his work is important.

So why is this? The 15+ paintings on view exhibit a range of subject matter, compositional strategies, narratives, and painting techniques and attest to a strong imagination and mastery of material.

(I’ve posted only photos of details of the paintings. You can view the whole works by following the link to the gallery website below.)

The artist says of his work in an interview with CITY Magazine, “I like to juxtapose a more abstract piece by hanging it next to something more literal” so that viewers will make comparisons, see relationships, and understand each differently.

What to look for:

• Images related to digital culture: i.e. pixelisation, discreet packaging, networking
• A palette consisting of dusty, muted blues and molten, fiery reds.
• The sublimation of the individual to larger forces (groups > individuals, history > moment, cosmic space > personal space)
• Textual additions — Try to imagine the images without the text, what do you think?

Jules de Balincourt
Premonitions
Deitch Projects — 18 Wooster Street
until April 24, 2010

See more of de Balincourt’s work here and here. He was part of the Greater New York exhibition at PS1 in  2005 and currently lives/works in Brooklyn.

Paintings and Objects. 1973, 136,5 x 167,5 x 153,7 cm. Acrylic and pencil on canvas and wood.

Two exhibitions in Soho bring a sense of personal reflection to abstract painting and drawing. At the Drawing Center, Ree Morton’s show, At the Still Point of the Turning World, is a quiet and intimate summary of her short career (1970-1977). Splitting Twilight is the most recent work from artist Kristin Baker whose paintings create energetic and inviting spaces for contemplation.

Ree Morton
At the Still Point of the Turning World
Drawing Center — 35 Wooster Street
Until December 18

The artist Ree Morton is a discovery for me. Though she is generally regarded as a highly influential, post-minimalist artist, her work isn’t often seen. Regardless, her forms are welcoming and the spare exhibition (take the left fork in the road as you enter the main space– it’s the later and more accessible work) is a sort of calm mystery. Works like “Swamp Cabbage” and “Paintings and Objects” seem instantly understandable and infinitely inscrutable at the same time.

“Swamp Cabbage,” a landscape with banners on which the words ’skunk’, ‘garlic’ and ‘putrid meat’ are written offers a hint at something more but refuses to fill in the blanks. Don’t be disheartened — give yourself over to the drawing and think about what the works evoke — What kind of garden is she creating? How do the works grow and relate to each other? What associations are made for you?  She is as interested in personal meaning as she is in giving the viewer something to chew on.

Though Ree Morton is in several museum collections, there seems to be some discord among critics and historians about her legacy. She left graduate school in 1970 at the age of 34 and went on to create ‘formally rigorous’ yet highly personal works. She was killed in 1977 in a car accident. For a concise description of her work and more, take a look at Frieze Magazine, April 2001.

Kristin Baker, Splitting Twilight, Installation view, November 5 - December 19, 2009, Deitch Projects 18 Wooster Street, Photo credit: Tom Powel Imaging

Kristin Baker
Splitting Twilight
Deitch Projects – 76 Grand Street
Until December 19

This exhibition is a unique experience — the floor of the gallery is painted the same as the walls so that the works are seem to float in an indefinite space. It is jarring to walk into such a stark environment. The paintings, however, are so dynamic that it is easy to enter them and feel overwhelmed by the marks.

The work here draws on the history of painting — Matisse’s “The Rose Marble Table” is copied — while others seem to reference landscapes or other spaces that the artist calls her favorite spots to sit and reflect.

These two shows are very much worth a visit. However, if you make it to Soho after Friday (when the exhibition at the Drawing Center closes), you can follow up your visit to Deitch with a look at Slater Bradley’s If We Were Immortal, a presentation of paintings of copied and invented album covers and a terrific assemblage of video in the back. Not a bad start to the weekend.

In the summer of 1982, Keith Haring with the help of friends cleared away bags and bags of garbage from the corner of Houston and Bowery.  As he explained “It was pretty disgusting, rat infested, almost a garbage dump, and an eyesore in a neighborhood where an eyesore wasn’t a problem… so we decided that we didn’t have to ask permission because the wall was covered with garbage and we that if we cleaned up the garbage then no one was going to ask us whether we had permission to paint it.”

Last year on the 50th anniversary of Keith Haring’s birth, Deitch Projects in association with The Keith Haring Foundation and Goldman Properties re-created Haring’s mural.

As part of the ongoing mural program for the wall, Os Gemeos, street artists from Brazil have created the 2nd mural project.  Os Gemeos meaning “the twins” in Portuguese are identical twin brothers Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo.  They were born in Sao Paulo in 1974 and took to their neighborhood streets with their graffiti art starting in 1987.  Embraced by their community and today by the art world at large, they present NY with a world of images from daily life and fantasy.  In their words, “we only report scenes from a magic, love and real place that lives inside us, a real dream, the scene of our own universe.”

Experience it…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/contortyourself/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Start on the left with the figure enclosed in the gray tiled room and let the narrative unfold.  (Notice Os Gemeos tag in the upper left and above is the mural’s dedication to NY graffiti artist Dash Snow who died while the mural was being painted.  Snow’s tag appears in the mural on the train station wall.)

Notice the boy on his bed using a peacock as an ear piece while another sits on his back.  He’s near the edge of a large circular waterfall which is filled creatures, one wearing fish mask (look closely at his shirt).  On the bridge crossing the waterfall, a family stands stacked on one another with a whale balanced on top.  A young woman lies on the whale back and her shirt turns into bubbles drifting upward.  The whale’s tail wraps around a floating train track.  Follow the N train with a large boy riding on top past a house with 2 boys (the twins?) squished inside and into a train station that turns into a boat.  A rainbow burst fills the right side of the mural and while a boy sits upside down partially submerged in the vibrant strokes of color, a bike rider and a clock carrier move across it’s surface.  Below stands a trojan horse whose neck opens like a cameo locket to reveal the faces of a boy and girl.

Armed with latex paint, rollers, spray paint, and small stencils to create a variety of patterns, Os Gemeos create many more details not mentioned above.  From the complex composition to the rendering of wood grain, prolonged looking reveals a technical prowess that makes it all appear effortless.

Os Gesmeos Mural, Houston Street and Bowery (NW corner)

July 17, 2009 - March 31, 2010

Goldman Properties and Deitch Project

Links to more of Os Gemeos:

PSFK

Cool Hunting