Adam Belt

Adam Belt

Adam
Belt

b. 1975      STUDIO IN SAN DIEGO, CA

West Region of USA
Adam Belt
Having begun his career as a landscape painter, Adam Belt’s current practice takes place at the point where art, science, and religion converge. Fascinated by the science of natural processes, Belt uses his artwork as a means of connecting with the ineffable something beyond those forces. Over his career, his work has dealt with landscape, geology, light, and ecology, all with a sense of reverence for the sublime. Lately, space exploration has been his inspiration, and his resulting work naturally involves consideration of scale, both in terms of distance and time.
 
In Through the Looking Glass, Belt assembles mirrors and lights in a geometric recess to create an illusory, multi-dimensional experience. The work mimics the shape of the primary mirror in the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be launched by NASA in 2018. Designed to seek out the faintest and most distant of light sources, the telescope will provide clues to the origins of the universe. For Belt, the work makes a deep connection between the spiritual and the scientific. Just as the telescope mirror must be free of flaws in order to receive light, a spiritual seeker strives to eliminate the self in order to receive enlightenment.

I grew up in Albuquerque, where there are pretty expansive views. I think wanting to be an artist was some way of tangibly interacting with that—that sense of eternity, that silence. It was kind of a way to work with it. So that continues; even though I’m not dealing with landscape necessarily, I’m still interacting with the unseen.

— Adam Belt