Blair Ekleberry

The artist Blair Ekleberry, originally from the United States and a graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2024, began his career as an architect before turning to a multidisciplinary artistic practice, ranging from drawing to sculpture.

With pencil in hand, he started sketching in the Boston subway, then in the bustling streets of Paris, the city he chose as his new home. He caricatures the expressions he observes in real time or recreates them from memory, distorting the faces he later integrates into his hyperrealist creations.

His work, free and colorful, is part a reaction against the minimalist architecture style in which he was trained. However, it is not devoid of architectural references: inspired by the grotesques of Romanesque capitals and Byzantine bas-reliefs, he confines his figures within frames or distorts them through perspective effects borrowed from the Middle Ages.

His sculpture, entitled the Tower of Bla-Bla, an accumulation of clay heads haphazardly stacked, reflects the characteristic hubbub of the capital streets. This contemporary Tower of Babel evokes both spatial claustrophobia and social disconnection, where physical proximity becomes uncomfortable.

Blair Ekleberry plays with references to create ironic and humorous works, highlighting the absurdity at the heart of our noisy and impatient society, where omnipresent communication loses its authenticity.