Brian Belott apparently enjoys stuff like dirty socks and pocket combs, especially when they’re nestled into something shimmering or glittery. He mashes together items from clothing shops on Flatbush Avenue, stoop sales and thrifts stores, in a manner that both honors and degrades their origins as found objects. In his current show, the main gallery is ringed with 18 new pieces, each painted on the back of a small sheet of glass to achieve shifting light effects. The back room contains laminated collage-drawings, pinned to the walls like specimens.
Pussy Painting, a twisted take on tantric art, features two yellow vertical combs, facing each other between abstracted thighs to form a vagina, complete with pubic hairs dusting the top. In Steps, stained sweat socks are pressed against a reflective field of magenta, blue and silver stripes; one thinks of vulnerable stockinged feet, trudging through grimy city streets to escape into a flattened metallic world. A piece of hosiery also appears in Grid Locked Sock, where it’s caught in a geometric web that radiates out from the pattern on its fabric.
Belott filters modernism through elementary-school collage, and beauty through crudeness. His work stakes out the territory where fun colors and cheap crap meet, to create devotional icons.—Jennifer Coates