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James Brooks
Eleven Times James Brooks
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2010
Pierced needle drawings on graph paper
26 x 20 cm each
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From left to right:
James Brooks musician
James Brooks councillor
James Brooks film producer
James Brooks accountant
James Brooks boy
James Brooks skateboarder
James Brooks rugby player
James Brooks assistant professor
James Brooks medical doctor
James Brooks company director
James Brooks painter
Eleven Times James Brooks is the first Trinity Project. James Brooks has been offered the intimate space of the gallery to explore a single theme related to his drawing practice. His installation of eleven portraits is presented along with a comprehensive illustrated publication about the artist and his project.
Search engine and namesakes
The idea for this series of portraits germinated when the artist realised that when anyone uses the search engine Google to find him on the Internet, the first James Brooks to appear is the 1950`s American painter of the same name. Intrigued by this homonym, he started to download photographs of people with the name James Brooks: “People I have something in common with but I do not actually know”
Eventually for this project he chose to realise eleven pierced needle portraits one for every letter of his name. The drawings are mounted horizontally in a group of five for J-A-M-E-S followed by a group of six for B-R-O-O-K-S. Each portrait drawing is framed within an oval mount, with an inscribed metal label indicating individual`s name and occupation.
Lo-tech and Hi-tech
The handmade needle holes technique considered as drawing by James Brooks originates from and yet is an innovation of a mid 19th century printmaking technique that breaks an image down into monochrome tones using different size dots.
Brooks enjoys the paradox of manually using an outdated technique to give his drawings, among other things, the pixel visual effects of computer images. In this project the artist constantly plays around and blurs the borders between lo-tech and hi-tech, old and new, past and present.
Portraits and Self portrait
Eleven Times James Brooks strongly questions the art of the portrait but also the impact of the internet and mass information on our sense of identity. How do we define ourselves in a world where virtual is taking over?
The artist directs the enquiry to self portraiture and representation through naming: “If you don`t portray yourself literally does it still make it self portraiture?” A self-referential art work becomes an intriguing survey of others. |
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