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Moberg Gallery
Justin Beller | Conn Ryder | Jeffrey Thompson | Bart Vargas
June 2, 2017
Justin Beller works with acrylic, wood, and UV coating to create interior spacescapes that compel one to look around, in every direction—for the viewer to be center, a compass, in order to embrace the 360. His diptych, “Forever,” is of two represented panels, in a Neopolitan color scheme, striped, and diagonally floating on two wood panels hung vertically. One appears to be pointing, or traveling, upward, while the other seems to be doing the opposite—stripes running down toward, and disappearing into, the bottom right corner of the frame. This makes the eye start low and travel upward—and then downward on the other side, as if travelling over a peak.
Beller’s “Freya” is a mixed-media work on panel, in black, white and gray. Geometric shapes and lines of many angles comprise the structures within, and nothing organic or curved is allowed. What these lines and shapes deliver are directional leanings, becoming puzzles already put together, given to the viewer in toto, so that the sum of parts may be questioned and reconsidered in their finitude. Beller’s lines lead the eye elsewhere, outside the frame, where the real saga may exist.
Beller’s two sculptures, “Tower” and “Tower II,” stand just high enough not to “tower” too much over any one or thing, but are tall enough to create a sense of human scale. In being sited where the viewer can walk directly up to them, the idea of out-of-reachness associated with towers becomes shrunk down to a sense of accessibility. These sculptures are vertically striped to extend the towers beyond their physical form and height. In Beller’s words, “The overall effect creates greater spatial awareness and a deeper appreciation of our immediate surroundings, ones that are ultimately as intimate as they are boundless.”