Morse code, the dot and dash. Visualize, in your mind, those marks turning into a peppercorn and sewing needle, and then into a black pearl and finishing nail, and then into a blackberry and rigatoni tube, then into a squash ball and Krink marker, and then into a avocado pit and mailing tube, then into a crystal ball and aluminum baseball bat, and then into a school globe and a soil auger, then into a manhole cover and diving board and then into a bank vault door and the unfurled dead sea scrolls and then into Big Ben’s clock face and The Grammy’s red carpet and then into Shakespeare’s circle of witches around a cauldron and a razor sharp swath of summoned souls stretched like taffy, Laughy, really but baffling to babbling hearing is the key. Chains of associations melt in the mind’s eye pour over consciousness like a surreal animation.
For my second show at the gallery, I decided to push the Puuuuuuuuuffffsss series further. This goop of work gets its name not only from its bulbous paint covered pillow stuffing balls but also from the name brand tissue boxes that filled the earlier version’s guts. The title has a stack of U’s and F’s and S’s to encourage the reader to elongate the pronunciation. Yet, I also need you to pronounce it with an inhale or exhale glottal fry and lower the pitch. Box fans, tissue boxes, broken chairs, door handles, grab bars, lemon squeezer, hand soap dispenser, taco holders, stained glass, children’s dioramas, grill brushes, a piano stool, and TV remotes are some of the cast I kick into a vat of Haim Steinbach taffy.
Brian Belott (b. 1973, East Orange, NJ) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received a BFA in 1995 from the School of Visual Arts, NY. His work has shown at The Journal, Brooklyn, NY; LOYAL, Malmö, Sweden; CANADA, New York, NY; and Galerie Zurcher, Paris, France. Notable exhibitions include: Whitney Biennial 2019, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2019); Call and Response, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, NY (2015); and Jeunes Créateurs à New York, Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne, Saint-Etienne, France (2014). Belott’s work is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
