The Chinese Pavilion @ The 55th Venice Art Biennale (Arsenale)
filmed by JEJ for FACADES
The Chinese evidently came out in full force in the Art Biennale this year, with striking images and video installations in huge scales conveying an assortment of visions all dubbed under the theme "Transfiguration".
Works of Wendy
Works by AES+F @ The Venice Pavilion For The 55th Venice Art Biennale10 images of Photo Installation & Sculpture shot by JEJ for FACADES
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mirroring David de la Chapelle...
The Feast of Trimalchio by AES+F @ the Pavilion of Venice
(La Biennale di Venezia 2013 Giardinni)
AES+F is a group of four Russian artists: Tatiana Arzamasova (1955), Lev Evzovich (1958), Evgeny Svyatsky (1957), and Vladimir Fridkes (1956). The group was formed in 1987 as AES by three artists: Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich and Evgeny Svyatsky. Photographer Vladimir Fridkes joined the group in 1995, and the name of the group changed to AES+F. The collective lives and works in Moscow.
Jules de Balincourt – Itinerant Ones (Victoria Miro 16 Nov - 20 Dec 2013)(5 images, courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro, London)
-Jules de Balincourt, High and Low, 2013, Oil and spray paint on panel, 203.2 x 177.8 x 6.3 cm © Jules de Balincourt 2013
-Jules de Balincourt, Itinerant Ones, 2013, Oil and acrylic on panel, 243.8 x 243.8 x 6.3 cm © Jules de Balincourt 2013
-Jules de Balincourt Firepeople, 2013, Oil on panel, 167.6 x 193 x 6.3 cm © Jules de Balincourt 2013
-Installation, Jules de Balincourt | Itinerant Ones, Victoria Miro Gallery, London, 16 November – 20 December 2013. Photography: Stephen White
-Installation, Jules de Balincourt | Itinerant Ones, Victoria Miro Gallery, London, 16 November – 20 December 2013. Photography: Stephen White
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SNOB( SIC[1]LONDONER) Someone who claims to be of higher intelligence than others, understands the finer thing in life, and generally deems themself a higher being than most others; they often refer to the 'lesser beings' as peasant or philistines. In simple terms, She's such a f******g snob. [2]
-Urban Dictionary
I tend to avoid Mayfair and East Central at the weekend. I don’t dismiss the ethnographic enjoyment of observing trends filter from the epicentre, to be spliced/diced in the provinces, and then re-enacted in the place of their origin. I’m simply exploring other terrains. However, Jules de Balincourt’s opening night at Victoria Miro proved the exception to my rule. At Old Street tube I left the Hoxton flow, dipped into Shoreditch Grind[3] and then wandered up City Road with my algorithmic accomplice. Spiralling property prices and increased tech focus has quelled the East London art boom: many galleries have moved West Central. Bohemia flourishes South or far North. Located on the Islington border, Victoria Miro’s gallery has retained its quiet force.
Jules de Balincourt's satirises and re-imagines social, political and economic landscapes. His paintings - through poetics of free-association - have a universal familiarity. Economic landscapes are intrinsically bi-polar. For instance ‘the world’s best beach’ is similarly a core hub for human trafficking[4]. The painting ‘Refuge Seekers and Skinny Dippers’ (2013) depicted a moonlit cove. The figures in the foreground enjoying an illicit dip in a moon dappled sea. To the left and right of the inlet a flotilla of pastel boats seemed on collision path. A trail of opalescent lunar dapples separated the two. Through shared colour palate, de Balincourt mediates and bridges - without judgement- the intermeshed economic systems that sustain our epoch.
Later at a pop-up diner ‘experience’ on Jamaica Road[5], I viewed the city skyline from an ex-local authority penthouse. The twinkles of Canary Warf mirrored infinitely within the bubbles of my glass[6]. The quant refilled. De Balincourt’s work ‘High and Low’ (2013) was still imprinted on my psyche. The painting, a vista of inner city utopianism in which the rigidity of 21st urban planning fades as the vision is drawn through the painting. The sharp stencilled skyscrapers becoming diffuse, ethereal, melting into the clouds. The resident’s converging around idolic statues. Despite concerted monetary and regulatory change some argue, we are ‘doomed to an endless cycle of bubble, financial crisis and currency collapse’[7]. Stability as utopic. De Balincourt's stencil and watercolour oil wash technique creates an apparently seamless vision between the two poles suggesting instead we should accept and draw what pleasure we can from the interwoven economic extremes.
http://www.victoria-miro.com/exhibitions/_448/
