Elephant Magazine interviews Jules de Balincourt about his Victoria Miro Mayfair exhibition

By Emily Spicer

“I rarely make paintings with a set, initial plan. They start as abstract forms and it becomes this intuitive, primitive, dance—a dance in the dark,” Jules De Balincourt tells me in a warm office at the back of Victoria Miro Gallery in Mayfair. It is bitterly cold outside, about 4C, but it feels tropical, he says, compared to the big freeze gripping the American east coast. He lives in “dark and dreary” Brooklyn, but that is hard to believe when standing in front of the sunny yellows and neon pinks of his canvases, which are populated by crowds of tiny people in strange, dream-like landscapes. “Painting is a form of escape. I just dive into the unknown and see where it takes me. You’ve got to just trust it. I’ve done it for twenty-five years now.”

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Image: installation view, Jules de Balincourt: They Cast Long Shadows

Installation photography: Thierry Bal