Barry X Ball

Born 1955 in Pasadena (USA), he lives in New York. 

One of the more unusual figures to have appeared on the art scene over the last twenty years, Barry X Ball can be said to have "extremised" the very notions of the abstract painting and the work of art by creating half-pictorial, half-sculptural hybrid objects using precious materials such as gold. In 1997 he shifted radically towards figuration and the portrait genre by transposing the conventions of the classical sculpted portrait onto laser-sculpted onyx pieces.

The refectory at the Jacobins convent is showing a set of these new works, a series of portraits of friends, collectors and artists (including a portrait of Matthew Barney, which has just been shown at P.S.1 in New-York), in a hanging specially designed by the artist.