James Brooks — Facts and Fictions — Galerie Laurent Mueller — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 12 → October 26, 2013

One can instantly recognise the trace of James Brooks, as well as of his favourite techniques among the exhibited series of drawings, prints and a video/sound installation.

But whilst looking closer, some works which could be mistaken for drawings are more similar to paintings with their successive layers of lacquer that Brooks has used in the series of drawings on canvas Invisible Cities (2013).

The exhibition at the gallery shows us how the artist apprehends manipulation and re-contextualisation of public information, or, how facts can lead us to fiction.

For his new audiovisual installation 21 Nocturnes des titres du Monde (2013), Brooks uses a mathematical procedure to translate the letters from Le Monde newspaper headlines into musical notes, referring to Chopin’s Nocturnes. Also, a series of prints titled Pillars of Hercules (2013) starts with the telephone numbers of European Union embassies which are transcribed into fictive telephone conversations. This results in a succession of repeated numbers on A4 paper, referring to the bureaucratic system which is so characteristic of our times.

James Brooks wants to integrate today’s political and societal resonances into his oeuvre and works incessantly by playing with repetition and the format of his works.