Page 46 - Art Review

In November, Brian Belott performed in New York, was a kind of conceptual
People Pie Pool, a massive ensemble work ‘collage’ of children’s art. For part
commissioned for Performa 17 in New of the show, Belott forged paintings
York. The performance involved (in part) of his favourite children’s-art. This
five comedians, a handful of basketball work sat alongside hundreds of
players, four academic lecturers, exercise masterful children’s drawings, culled
instructors, an improv troupe, dancers, from the astonishing archive of art
marching bands and an ‘orchestra’ that educator Rhoda Kellogg. The show
performed with can openers, golf balls for his famed show at Radio City Music Hall also included art classes for youth
and tissues. In this way, the event recalled in 1979, in which he took the entire audience out in the surrounding Harlem community,
a vaudevillesque variety show, alternating for milk and cookies. To do so, Belott often works most of whom plastered their own scribbles
between old-fashioned knee-slapping with a community of artists and friends in New and finger paintings on the wall.
fun and abstract stretches of tumbling, York, including – full disclosure – this author. For Together, the onslaught of work created
punishing absurdity. People Pie Pool, I conducted a children’s choir while a bewildering soup of authorship that left most
At one point in the evening, Belott staged standing in the middle of the audience. I’ve also viewers unsure of what they were looking at.
a parody of an art auction in which paintings collaborated and exhibited with Brian, and once, As he often does, Belott had cloaked himself
by major artists (Joe Bradley, Katherine at Performa 15, we (along with 30 other singers) in the mundane, this time inhabiting the
Bernhardt, Jamian Juliano-Villani, Eddie surrounded a ridiculously long dining table underappreciated artistry of the young, those
Martinez, etc – all friends of Belott) were of benefactors and demanded to be fed by them. invisible outsider artists living among us.
destroyed on stage and run through a paper Belott is also well known for his paintings, The gesture was not unlike his approach
shredder. Finally, each painting was stuffed which, like his performances, are both thrilling to recent performances, in which he has trans-
into a single plastic pen to be gifted back to each and uncomfortable to experience. He likes to formed himself into a collagist working at
artist. Belott narrated the ordeal with the kind prod his viewer’s sense of good taste with glittery, the directorial level, an impresario attempting
of stuttering, pun-filled nonsense and slapstick gaudy colours and childish humour. He usually to spin an impossible number of plates just
humour that characterises many of his perfor- works in long-term series, most of which collide to watch them all come crashing onto the floor.
mances, including the preposterous ‘fashion painting against a collage of dollar-store mate- Brian Belott What are you doing?
show’ held at London’s Serpentine Galleries rials, including socks, wall fans, rocks, calcula-
in 2016. The auction, with its anarchic approach tors, remote controls, marshmallows and hair ross simonini I’m calling you.
to the market, also recalled the stunt Belott gel. The work strikes a curious balance between BB But you just called a second ago and hung up.
used to raise funds for the event, in which the simple chromatic pleasures of Henri Matisse
he travelled to various museums in New York and the crude energy of art brut. rs That was an accident.
(the Whitney, the New Museum, etc) and sold Belott’s most recent exhibition, Dr. Kid BB This is so inprofessional. Let it be known
his work for ‘arbitrary’ sums. President Jr. (2017), at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise that the interviewer is inprofessional.
Belott identifies his impulses as ‘Dada’ and
seeks to invent a perfect mess of an experience, People Pie Pool (detail), 2017, performance. rs I don’t think that’s a word.
something like what Andy Kaufman achieved Photo: Chris Sanders. Courtesy Performa 17, New York

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