'Homestead' is Justin Colt Beckman's rural shrine/sly joke

Galleries are rarely described as "homey." They are closer to modernist chapels, shrines that either are precious or desecrated (artists love to mess with the absurd tidiness of the white box).

But Justin Colt Beckman, who has pinballed around the country -- California, Kentucky, Florida and currently Ellensburg -- captures rural life, or at least a version of it, in his solo exhibition "Homestead." The installation takes up three-quarters of Punch Gallery. There is a porch, a banged-up metal mailbox and a fence. Split wood is piled up, an old-time song plays and a train passes.

"Homestead" also has two clever video projections. One is of Beckman seated in a high-backed upholstered chair that looks like a prop from Masterpiece Theatre, eating a bucket of chicken and washing it down with Busch beer. The strangely mesmerizing hourlong footage is sped up to the pace of a competitive eater. The second video is of his dog gnawing on a bone in the front yard, projected on the wall just behind the fence.

It's rural minimalism but still closer to Ma and Pa Kettle than the cabin of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. Beckman's shack is home. It's also a sly joke about the tedium of the everyday that manages to captivate in the way our own home lives usually don't.

Through Sept 30. Punch Gallery, 119 Prefontaine Place S., 621-1945. Friday-Sunday noon-5 p.m.

-- Nate Lippens