Jules de Balincourt The Watchtower 2005 oil, enamel and spray paint on panel 31" x 39"

It's just a terrific show.

Jules de Balincourt's "This Is Our Town" opened at Zach Feuer's 24th Street gallery tonight. Barry and I have two pieces we purchased two years ago, before his first one-man show at what was then called LFL Gallery. I have no idea what it would cost to enlarge our modest holdings today, but it wouldn't surprise me if everything we saw there is already sold. That likelihood and especially our limited household budget mean that from now on I'm going to have to be content with visiting other spaces to see what this artist continues to do with a brush (and occasionally some spray paint or very-mixed media*).

But if it was both constructive and great fun being there early as excited collectors, there's still loads of excitement in the looking and I'd strongly encourage anyone interested in painting in this new Age of Terror not to miss the show. From the press release:

As suggested by the show's title, taken from the scoreboard overlooking Madison Square Garden, "This Is Our Town," explores a tension between leisure, survival, and the polarized paranoia between "us" and "them." Themes of surveillance, destruction, and looming breaches of privacy comprise this series of playfully sinister works.

Righteous social or political outrage has rarely gone down so gracefully - or so beautifully. The colors alone are worth writing home about, but you're going to have to be there to really see them.

Jules de Balincourt Untitled 2005 oil and enamel on panel 13" x 15"

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Don't miss the Personal Survival Doom Buggy. Well, actually there's not a chance you might.