Slacker survivalism might be one way to describe the sensibility of artist (and current “Greater New York 2005” participant) Jules de Balincourt. Even the titles of his paintings—from Poor Planning, 2005, to Head for the Hills, 2004, or Another Natural Disaster, 2005, to Beginning to See the Light, 2005—send a strong message that something is sorely amiss in the world. U.S. World Studies III, 2005, tracks donations of corporations like Walmart, Home Depot, and Target to the G.O.P. on a map of the United States, while The Watchtower, 2005, goes inside an unnamed command center, and The People Who Play and the People Who Pay, 2004, a pool scene outside a highrise hotel, looks like an image cribbed from an Andreas Gursky photo—seconds before catastrophe strikes. His figures are drawn in a scrawly, non-academic style that recalls outsider or naïf art—particularly of the doomsayer persuasion—and his color is deeply saturated, recalling industrial paints. The sculpture Personal Survivor Doom Buggy, 2005, with its own manual and commando-outfitted dummy, might be taking it too far; on the other hand, it might be the best evidence that de Balincourt’s prognostications are hardly ironic.
