Davide Balula

Working with various media including sound, installation, and drawing, Davide Balula explores the nature of events and correlations. He often allows the effects of deterioration to compose the visual surface of his paintings. For example, to make his River Paintings he abandons canvases in a riverbed for various amounts of time, allowing them to gather sediments, grown algae, and mould. Within the same field of research he has created Burnt Paintings where he burns the picture frame then rubs it on another canvas to create a negative image. He also has a series of Artificially Aged Paintings (wet/dry/wet/dry) conceived following the artist’s collaboration with a fabricator of climatic chambers, which reproduce the effects of erosion. To create the work, primed canvas is submitted to a series of conditions reflecting different temperature cycles: hot, cold, humidity, etc, which simulate accelerated weather fluctuations that effect work over time. Time and context are central concerns for Balula, each a unit in a long chain of experiences.

He has had solo exhibitions at Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val de Marne in Vitry-sur-Seine, Center for Contemporary Creation (CCC) in Tours, Gagosian Gallery in Athens, and Alison Jacques Gallery in London, among other venues. His performances have been presented at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, MoMA PS1 in New York, Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow, Performa Biennale in New York, and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. His work has been included in group exhibitions at institutions including The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art in Riga, Musée d’art contemporain in Nîmes, WIELS centre d’art contemporain in Bruxelles, and Bielefelder Kunstervein.

Courtesy of Galerie Frank Elbaz