Blair EKLEBERRY
Visual artist Blair Ekleberry, originally from the United States and a graduate of the Beaux-Arts in Paris in 2024, began his career as an architect before dedicating himself to a multidisciplinary artistic practice, ranging from drawing to sculpture.
Pencil in hand, he began sketching in the Boston subway, then in the bustling streets of Paris, a city he chose as his new home. He caricatures the expressions he observes on the spot or reproduces from memory, distorting the faces he then reintegrates into his hyperrealistic creations.
His free, colorful work reacts to the minimalist, uncluttered architecture that influenced his EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND. Yet it is not free of architectural references: inspired by the grotesque grotesques of Romanesque capitals and Byzantine bas-reliefsinspired by the grotesques of Romanesque capitals and Byzantine bas-reliefs, he constrains his figures within frames or distorts them through perspective effects borrowed from the Middle Ages.
His sculpture entitled Tour de Bla-Bla, an accumulation of clay heads that overlap carelessly, reflects the characteristic hubbub of the capital's streets. This contemporary Tower of Babel evokes both a spatial claustrophobia and a social disconnection, where proximity is disturbing.
Blair Ekleberry plays with references to produce ironic and humorous works, highlighting the absurdity at the heart of our noisy and impatient society, where omnipresent communication loses its authenticity.
