Jules de Balincourt. Valley Pool Party. 24" x 20", archival pigment print. Signed edition of 50. $300. Jules de Balincourt paints in a "stylistic amalgam of Pop and folk," rendering scenes that refuse reality in favor of utopian ideals or dystopian projections. Often disguising complex social commentary through seemingly innocuous scenes, de Balincourt's narratives slip and shift between verisimilitude and facade. Of de Balincourt's 2016 solo show at Victoria Miro, the gallery writes, "through provocative detail or disconcerting shifts of scale, often the works destabilize their own apparent narrative." In Valley Pool Party we are treated to an intoxicatingly lush setting -- deceptively picturesque -- that is from his recent body of work, reflecting on his return to his hometown of Los Angeles after a twenty year hiatus.
