Brian Belott

We are thrilled to announce Dr. Kid President Jr., a solo exhibition of paintings and drawings by Brian Belott. There will be two new books published for the occasion, and 50% of sales from the exhibition will be donated to Art Start to assist in youth art initiatives.

The collectors bug bit me at a young age. For me collecting is deeply joined with the impulse to make. Amongst my various collections, one great obsession is acquiring any book on children's art I can find. After seeing maybe hundreds of titles on the subject, two authors in particular stand out in a profound way. Shankar's International Children's Competition, a massive compendium released yearly in conjunction with an international children’s art contest, has been published since 1952. It contains some of the greatest children's masterpieces I have ever seen. I love these seemingly endless volumes! Equally influential to me is the work of educator and author Rhoda Kellogg. Taking a Jungian approach to analyzing the forms of children's drawings, Kellogg charts the universal developmental stages of picture making that span cultures and geographic boundaries. These studies get to the core of mark making and they illuminate the source of the purity of gesture that I admire in the works of the Art Brut movement.

I spent several years copying artists like Matisse, Morandi, Van Gogh, and Guston. I found the process to be another way to collect and digest the information contained in these heavyweight texts. Picasso told us that all children are artists. Although many people appreciate childrens art, it will never command record prices at auction, and typically many of these treasures are thrown away to make room for ski boots or christmas wreaths. When living in LES over 20 years ago, one winter night I found a garbage bag filled with the drawings of three young brothers. I dragged the precious booty back to my apartment. One character that appeared in this discarded archive made its way into my work when I realized the need to copy it ad nauseum. Since that night I've obsessively infused elements I find in children's drawings into my work. I collect, archive, edit, and re-examine my favorite paintings year after year. Always wanting to absorb them further, I copy them. The results of this obsession are displayed in this show.

—Brian Belott