Brian Belott
Circa Skippy
09 Sep - 24 Oct 2020
Tanya Leighton is delighted to announce the gallery’s first exhibition with New York based artist, Brian Belott. The show shares its title, “Circa Skippy”, with the largest work in the exhibition: a panoramic, five-panel assemblage that employs rolls of paint-soaked paper towels as kinetic elements. Having previously been used by the artist as ad hoc brushes, these supersaturated scrolls now wave in the breeze contributed by fans embedded in each panel’s surface.
Belott’s polymathic approach allows his interests and ideas to run to their most absurd conclusions and back again. Poking and prodding at artistic convention, he leaves nothing off the table with regard to inspiration, materials and execution. He looks to children’s art with the same reverence as he does Dadaism. Belott has crafted artworks using calculators, TV remotes and old socks; most recently he coaxed cat food and coloured hair gel into frozen compositions that are displayed in windowed freezers commonly found in grocery stores. He sees creative potential in every moment and everything. For years, Belott has even made spontaneous drawings on sketch pads mounted to the tile walls of his shower, while he is showering.
An encyclopedic knowledge of art history, literature, music, comedy, Americana and popular culture feeds Belott’s artistic practice, which effortlessly switches between mediums and approaches, and is packed with inherent levity and understated brilliance. This deep-reaching catalogue of inspiration is layered into Belott’s works, lending them complexity that belies their superficial zaniness.
‘Circa Skippy’ focuses on Belott’s acclaimed ‘Puuuuuuuuuffs’ series — paintings whose surfaces are stuffed full of thick cotton batting, paint-soaked sponges and amorphous blobs of color. The wonky geometries in Belott’s ‘Puuuuuuuuuffs’ are punctuated by knobs, handles and hooks, cheap appliances, as well as tufted bathroom tissues, all picked up from dollar stores. The fans and kitschy electronics that are set into the works surfaces remain switched on throughout the duration of the show, humming and flickering with a performative energy that mirrors the artist’s own personality.
Belott’s polymathic approach allows his interests and ideas to run to their most absurd conclusions and back again. Poking and prodding at artistic convention, he leaves nothing off the table with regard to inspiration, materials and execution. He looks to children’s art with the same reverence as he does Dadaism. Belott has crafted artworks using calculators, TV remotes and old socks; most recently he coaxed cat food and coloured hair gel into frozen compositions that are displayed in windowed freezers commonly found in grocery stores. He sees creative potential in every moment and everything. For years, Belott has even made spontaneous drawings on sketch pads mounted to the tile walls of his shower, while he is showering.
An encyclopedic knowledge of art history, literature, music, comedy, Americana and popular culture feeds Belott’s artistic practice, which effortlessly switches between mediums and approaches, and is packed with inherent levity and understated brilliance. This deep-reaching catalogue of inspiration is layered into Belott’s works, lending them complexity that belies their superficial zaniness.
‘Circa Skippy’ focuses on Belott’s acclaimed ‘Puuuuuuuuuffs’ series — paintings whose surfaces are stuffed full of thick cotton batting, paint-soaked sponges and amorphous blobs of color. The wonky geometries in Belott’s ‘Puuuuuuuuuffs’ are punctuated by knobs, handles and hooks, cheap appliances, as well as tufted bathroom tissues, all picked up from dollar stores. The fans and kitschy electronics that are set into the works surfaces remain switched on throughout the duration of the show, humming and flickering with a performative energy that mirrors the artist’s own personality.