Crammed into the basement gallery of David Leonardis in Chicago's famous River North gallery district is "Nomenclature," a new show featuring the work of Loyola graphic design professor Michel Balasis. Featuring 10 of his new paintings, along with the work of Andy Kane, this show strives to offer unique commentary on modern life.
Balasis showed an interest in art early in life and explains that his drawings "seemed to have this graphic feel" even in elementary school. Reflecting on his doodles when he was young, Balasis says, "It's interesting because my paintings now really just look like large graphics." From an early age and still today, the interest in graphic design dominates Balasis' work.
Although he had an early interest in art, Balasis did not consider a career in art until a high school teacher suggested studying graphic design in college. Balasis took this advice and graduated from Michigan State with a degree in fine arts. Shortly after graduating, Balasis started his own graphic design company called B Creative. To gain clients, Balasis went around to restaurants and asked if they wanted a menu redesigned. In this way, Balasis started to establish a name for his company, which would go on to do design work for companies as large as General Motors.
At the age of 23, Balasis decided he wanted to become more serious about his paintings and began to show at a gallery. Balasis describes his earlier work as "much more abstract" and "stylistically completely different." Although bright colors and bold outlines continue to define his work, Balasis' recent art features a distinctly comic book style.
The aesthetics of Balasis' paintings derive primarily from two major sources: the comic books and cartoons Balasis read as a child and the work of Roy Lichtenstein, a highly influential pop art painter of the 1960s. Lichtenstein was the first artist to utilize the comic book imagery to push the boundary of what can be considered fine art. Although Balasis uses a highly similar styling, he explains that Lichtenstein's work was more about the "relationship to mass printed cartoon and comic book imagery as fine art," whereas his work takes these forms and applies them to a "a pop culture of 2007" to offer societal critiques.
Although Balasis relies heavily of the styling of '60s and '70s comic books, he explains that he is "usually pretty up to the minute on trends" to keep his paintings current.
Balasis describes the creation of his paintings as "quite a lengthy process." He starts by deciding on the theme he wants his next painting to convey and then flips through "hundreds of comic books" he has in his studio to find a form that would reflect his desired content. Next he makes a sketch off that image, scans it into the computer and cleans up the lines to make a bold and high contrast image. This image is then printed and projected onto a canvas where he traces it and paints the lines in black. Due to the graphic nature of Balasis' work, lines play an especially important role, and he explains that he "adds a dynamic to those black lines" by varying "where they will be thick and thin."
Next comes the color, of which Balasis is equally as particular: "Unfortunately, I think most of my paintings have two or three paintings underneath because I'm constantly changing subtle tones and shades of my colors." After the correct color is painted completely opaquely, Balasis goes back over the painting in black to touch up any imperfections.
Balasis' new work exhibited at David Leonardis' gallery stands out with beautiful and bold colors and contours. This creates a nice contrast with the other artist of the show, Andy Kane, whose work uses a loose and chaotic style reminiscent of expressionism. This contrast can be seen in Balasis' piece "Breaking Up" and Kane's piece "Cellular City." While both focus on modern technology and communication, Kane's piece shows the chaotic nature of modern life created through new technology, whereas Balasis' piece shows how technology has changed how we communicate with each other.
"Breaking Up" features a distressed woman on her cell phone with a speech bubble saying, "You're Breaking Up." Like much of Balasis' work, this painting creates a double meaning with the literal breaking up of the cell phone reception and the breaking up of the relationship between the woman and the person on the other line.
In creating social commentary, Balasis' pieces do not extend far beyond these quaint observations of modern life. Similarly, the style of these paintings does not feel new or original despite the fact that Balasis tweaks the images in an attempt to make them feel modern. Overall, the paintings seem to read more as trendy, bright poster images rather than works of art commenting on modern life. Although Balasis does offer his own small stylistic and thematic differences, these popular comic book style images in the service of fine art have already been exhausted by Balasis' predecessors.
Balasis' work, however, is highly visually appealing, and he does create paintings that are both bold and beautiful. "Nomenclature" stands out with its confident use of bright colors and defined lines in creating little commentaries on the everyday modern world.
"Nomenclature," featuring the paintings of Michel Balasis, is on display through May 1 at the David Leonardis Gallery, located at 217 W. Huron, $5. For more information, visit www.dlg-gallery.com.
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