Brian Belott’s bizarre and child-like books and collages investigate the fluctuating state of a “self-imposed permanent psychedelic trip.”

Belott utilizes elements of ephemeral cultural detritus - ingredients that ultimately relate to 60’s and 70’s pop culture - to examine materials, process, and cultural memory. Utilizing found images and sound, children’s books, cartoons, fabric, and other “tag sale” novelties, the artist, who cites the Marx Brothers and Woody Allen as his key influences, relies on free association and humor in rendering work and reworking images that manage to be both whimsical and monumental. Investigating the aesthetics of cultural decay by using “low-tech” methods of application, Belott creates thickly and elaborately layered collages, books, paintings, and works on paper alongside seemingly disparate groupings of found images and sound.

Belott’s sincere knowledge of his materials – he is as much a collector of cultural ephemera as he is a creator of it—is reinforced by his interest in humor, kitsch and self-discovery. Combining imagery taken from the mythical language of scavenged children’s books, Belott subverts outdated moral lessons and bible stories. These forgotten “lesson’s in morality,” at one time intended to shape the minds of impressionable young people, are now exposed to the hand of the artist whose whim for free association distorts for the sake of humor and experimentation.

This exhibition is done in cooperation with CANADA.