In the Mini Skirt this month, we present the Boston debut of artist Jules de Balincourt, whose paintings seem to reflect the sensibility of Grandma Moses -- if she had been born a hippie in the 1960s, or perhaps a slacker in the 1990s. De Balincourt finds his subject matter in ultra-common contemporary imagery (an isolated structure in a parking lot; a bird house in the backyard), as well as in the words and phrases that pepper our landscape, from the iconic (“Neil Young”) to the inanely overstated (“Blowout Sale”). Born in Paris and raised in Paris, LA and San Francisco, De Balincourt got his BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts in 1998, and now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His work will be featured in a solo show at the LFL Gallery in New York City in June 2003.

Making Arrangements by Pamela Allara

In the 60s, modernist painting was disciplined by the grid, the rigid mesh that filtered out any reference to representation and guaranteed painting’s purity. Of course, that purity was spiritual as well as formal, and aesthetic rigor was an ascetic practice preparing the artist’s (and viewer’s?) soul for higher realms. Still, Kandinsky’s shadow lurked behind those grids, no matter how minimalist the artist declared them to be. By the turn of the twenty-first century, the practice of painting had left its mysticism behind, and with it the talisman of the grid as a guide to aesthetic grace. No longer synonymous with high art, recent abstract painting appears to have more modest aims, but is no less interesting for seeming to be less ambitious. Robin Dash’s work is rooted in 60s Minimal art, but like neo-formalist painting today it is quirky rather than somber, improvised rather than preconceived. Dash’s paintings begin with an initial shape, a puzzle-like form from which others are generated. The resulting arrangement is that of the algorithm, as if a computer program has been set to permit forms to replicate but not to precisely repeat. As the geometric patterns multiply asymmetrically across a flat ground whose perimeters they cheerfully ignore, (no ‘deductive structure’ here!), they accumulate their own energy, one that has the potential to dissolve into chaos or settle into order. Each canvas seems suspended between those two extremes, a state of coming-into-being that is slightly disquieting in its willingness to relinquish control, to permit the pattern to resolve itself—or not. Although one metaphor for these paintings is the systematic nature of the computer, the paintings are clearly hand-done. As the viewer mentally retraces the process of building the composition, the painted
line can seem hesitant, even awkward, rather than preprogrammed. Brice Marden’s paintings come to mind, but perhaps the wild zig-zags of crazy quilts or the unexpected juxtapositions of sampled music are more on the mark. If the self-generating shapes appear arbitrary, only to promise order, so the palette, odd, veering toward the tasteless at times, alternates between the manufactured and the electronic. Either way, its beauty is non-natural yet surprisingly comforting, even intimate, like a plastic toy from childhood. As the paintings begin to stack up, as if in extension of her painting process, Dash becomes a curator of her own work, carefully arranging and rearranging them on the wall. All art has a use, and painting’s role is now acknowledged as interior décor, hence its frequent reference to the forms and colors of modernist design. Despite the care with which Dash’s ‘design elements’ are juxtaposed, each assembly appears to emerge from the...