Kimberly Brooks | Mom's Friends by Griffith Moon

MOM’S FRIENDS

K I M B E R LY B R O O K S

TAYLOR DE CORDOBA

K I M B E R LY B R O O K S Mom’s Friends

KIMBERLY BROOKS Mom’s Friends Printed in California All Images © Kimberly Brooks First Edition, July 13, 2013 Los Angeles, California All rights reserved. All images contained in this book are the sole property of Kimberly Brooks. No part of this publication may be duplicated or transmitted in any form without prior written consent from Taylor de Cordoba. Displaying such material without prior permission is a violation of the international copyright laws. Design: Lightray Productions Inc. Kimberly Brooks kimberlybrooks.com Represented by Taylor De Cordoba taylordecordoba.com

TAYLOR DE CORDOBA

K I M B E R LY B R O O K S Mom’s Friends

ESSAY Leah Lehmbeck

Having entered a post-feminist age where the question of “can we have it all?”, Kimberly Brooks’ series of paintings, “Mom’s Friends,” based upon her mother and her mom’s friends in Mill Valley in the late 1970s, the subject is considered afresh. Brooks depicts women who are, according to her, “endlessly fascinating and mysterious...particularly because they are in a state of transition.” Viewed through the theme of womanhood through the imagery of female liberation some thirty years ago, Brooks reminds us not only of the question’s continual relevance, and also investigates the complex relationship between reality, memory and representation. As universal as this topic is—the “woman question”, continually up for discussion since the inception of modern feminism in the late 1960s—Brooks was specifically inspired by her role as the mother of a young daughter. “Now that I am a mother with a daughter of my own, I see the way she studies me and my friends, how she imitates the way I walk and talk or wants to traipse in my heels,” the artist explains. Recalling how she used to do the same, Brooks turned to her own mother for inspiration, deciding to use photographs from the 1970s of her mother and her mom’s friends (actual, and recreated in the studio with friends in vintage clothing) as the basis for this series. By presenting women who migrated to California from the Midwest and East Coast who consequently “melted their inhibitions, heated up their styles and...shed previous notions of themselves,” Brooks’s paintings fix us at a significant time and place when women raised in the 1950s sought, for the first time, to forge their identities apart from their husbands and families. Interestingly, what is not shown, but lurks, is the pain and dysfunction wrought by the inevitable divorce and the shattering of the nuclear family that ensued after this newfound freedom was acheived. And it is this feature—these mother’s newfound autonomy—that Brooks presents, and inevitably positions against her own identity as a

mother and against the current state of feminism. The women in these paintings, with confident bodies and smiles thrust up to the picture plane, appear to bask in their newfound freedom. Yet it is the pictures’ relationship, once again, to photography that complicates these ostensibly straightforward representations. Although the gazes of the female figures in Brooks’s paintings are direct, they are not entirely convincing in their self-assurance. Whether this insecurity is a convention of the pose or an uneasy reflection of a newly created identity is up for us to decide. And their look—as if they know they are being watched—returns us to Brooks’ earlier explorations of women as object in her previous series, “ The Whole Story” about women as subject and object of “the gaze”. Even in their freest context, women cannot avoid but being both subject and object at once. The explicit connection between the paintings and decades old photographs adds another provocative dimension to this conversation between past and present. It is as though we’ve seen the pictures before. In “Train to Reno”, for example, skin tones are paler and more olive, and lipstick and blush are richer than they should be—the slick surface of the oil paint carrying deep reds, browns, yellows, and even blacks and whites a shade deeper than their counterparts in reality.

Sophia Loren of Mill Valley Oil on Panel 36” x 36”, 2007

The Second Polaroid Ever Taken Oil on Linen 20” x 20”, 2007

Train to Reno Oil on Panel 36” x 36”, 2007

Esalen Oil on Linen 30” x 40’’, 2007

Tennessee Valley Road Oil on Linen 18” x 18”, 2007

This rich undercurrent of color immediately imparts onto the work the aesthetic of an aged photo, subtly beckoning memories from our own unique past. Like contemporary painters Eric Fischl or Elizabeth Peyton, Brooks creates an aesthetic of memory through the familiar, carefully framed, high contrast visions found in a photo album. In so doing, she demands that we consider both the subject of the picture and the memory of the subject itself. In ” The Sophia Loren of Mill Valley”, the limited palette of the sun-soaked, feather-haired women is applied in even more severe contrast, this a result of basing the work on a black and white photograph. Moreover, the extreme tonal range in this essentially monochromatic painting resembles the dramatic, cinematic lighting utilized by another of Brooks’s contemporaries, Mark Tansey. While his large, single-toned illustrative canvases are intended to relate the complex relationship between reality and the painted surface, Brooks’s re-presentations of representations inevitably recall the same fraught connection. Brooks herself notes that “sometimes the memory can be indistinguishable from the image of a photo, as if the photograph suffices in our minds, like an emotional Cliff Note.” The memory of a real event is deeply imbricated with its representation. Many of the women are depicted with other women—a reflection of the vital sisterhood that grew out of this generation’s liberation. Yet because Brooks’s subjects are viewed some thirty years later from her own perspective as a mother, she positions this peer-support group alongside the very personal theme of motherhood. These interests are intriguingly at odds: the former, an interest in women who left the traditional family unit behind in an effort to forge an identity outside of it. At its heart lies

an inquiry into the role of women in a society that now accounts for both mother/sister and daughter, often found in the same woman. One of the last pieces to be created for the series is a picture of five little girls, of which the artist is one, and which aptly summarizes Brooks viewpoint. In “Filmmaker, Lawyer, Artist, Entrepeneur, Doctor” the artist depicts the daughters of these women and reminds us simultaneously of what women were, what they can become. In the end, Brooks addresses the myriad ways that women are in society in this post-feminist era, and as such provides another thoughtful re-assessment of the perennial question “can we have it all?” Using imagery from the past to engage with an issue in the present, Brooks also explores the complexities associated with reality and representation. In pursuit of these artistic concerns, Brooks captures a moment in time where current state of femininity in relation to the freedoms that the modern era has unequivocally afforded. In this new body of work, Brooks has answered the question that her paintings, at least, can have it all. Leah Lehmbeck Assistant Curator, Norton Simon Museum Los Angeles, 2007

Kimberly Brooks

Solo Exhibitions

b. New York, NY 1966. B.A. UC Berkeley, Literature 1989. Painting, Otis College of Art and Design 2001-2004. Painting, UCLA 2002-2004. Studio in Venice, California.

2014 Punk History Curator, Bruce Helander ArtHouse 429, West Palm Beach, FL

www.kimberlybrooks.com

2011 Thread Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles, CA 2010 The Stylist Project Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles, CA 2008 Technicolor Summer Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles, CA 2007 Mom’s Friends Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles, CA 2006 The Whole Story Risk Press Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Selected Group Exhibitions

Selected Group Exhibitions (cont.)

2013 Forest From The Trees, Curators Joshua Dildine, Chris Trueman, White Box Contemporary, San Diego CA Sense and Sensibility, Curator Fatemeh Burnes, Mount San Antonio College, CA Refraction, Curator Paul Hemming, Mirus Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2007 Cover Version, Curator Timothy Hull Art LA, Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles, CA

2012 New American Paintings, Juried Exhibition, No. 103 Aqua Art Miami, Taylor De Cordoba, Miami CA Coming Together. Curator Sonny Ruscha Bjornson, Laura Grover, Fabien Fryns Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2011 5-year Anniversary Group Show, featuring Kimberly Brooks Miniatures. Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles, CA 2010 Women of Women: The Female Form. Curator Yasmine Mohseni, Los Angeles, CA Incognito, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA 2009 Made in California. Eight California Artists: including Ed Moses, Laddi John Dill, Kimberly Brooks, Curator Stephanie Addis, Santa Monica, CA ArtHAUS: 20 Artists from Los Angeles and Berlin. Curator Thomas Schirnboeck, Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Venice CA 2008 New American Paintings, Juried Exhibitions in Print, Curator Rita Gonzoles, LACMA. Pacific Coast Edition. No. 79 ArtLA, Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles, CA Aqua Art Miami, Taylor De Cordoba, Miami, FL Scope Int’l Art Fair, Taylor De Cordoba, New York, NY

2006 24rd Juried Exhibition, Pleiades Gallery Juror: Elisabeth Sussman, Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, Art, New York, NY Juried Exhibition, Juror: Chris Burden, Topanga Canyon Gallery, Topanga, CA Self Portraits, Risk Press Gallery, Curator Chuck Pendergrast, Los Angeles, CA 2005 23rd Juried Exhibition, Juror: Jordan Kantor, Asst. Curator MOMA, Pleiades Gallery Contemporary Art, New York, NY The Human Figure, Juried Exhibition, Juror: Joan Hugo, California Institute of the Arts, Long Beach, CA 2004 America Coming Together, Curator: Brooke Emerson, Phillips de Pury Auction House, Los Angeles, CA

Selected Features and Reviews The Art Economist, 2012. Vanity Fair, 2008, 2011. The LA Times, 2007, 2010. LA Weekly, 2011. Beautiful Decay, 2011. LA Canvas, 2012. C Magazine, 2007, 2008, 2010. Daily Serving, 2010. Times of India, 2010. Architects and Artisans, 2011. Art Ltd, 2008. Vogue US, Italia, Espana 2008, 2010, 2012. The Huffington Post, 2006, 2010, 2011, 2012. Pen Magazine, Japan 2008. www.kimberlybrooks.com

Carole and Suzie Emerge from the Ladies Room Oil on Linen 30’’ x 30’’, 2007

Ferry Ride Oil on Linen 12” x 16”, 2007

Coppertone Oil on Linen 12” x 16”, 2007

Heather Oil on Linen 12” x 18’’, 2007

Filmmaker, Lawyer, Artist, Entrepreneur, Doctor Oil on Linen 12” x 16’’, 2007

Hot Faucet Oil on Linen 20” x 20’’, 2007

Call Me Gouache 9” x 11”, 2007

Carmel Gouache 9” x 11”, 2007

Motherhood Gouache 9” x 11”, 2007

Cocktail Party Gouache 9” x 11”, 2007

Thank God We Left Michigan Gouache 9” x 11”, 2007

Carrera Drive Gouache 9” x 11”, 2007

Kimberly Brooks

Solo Exhibitions

b. New York, NY 1966. B.A. UC Berkeley, Literature 1989. Painting, Otis College of Art and Design 2001-2004. Painting, UCLA 2002-2004. Studio in Venice, California.

2014 New Works ArtHouse 429 Curator, Bruce Helander West Palm Beach, FL 2011 Thread Taylor De Cordoba Los Angeles, CA 2010 The Stylist Project Taylor De Cordoba Los Angeles, CA 2008 Technicolor Summer Taylor De Cordoba Los Angeles, CA 2007 Mom’s Friends Taylor De Cordoba Los Angeles, CA 2006 The Whole Story Risk Press Gallery Los Angeles, CA

Selected Group Exhibitions

Selected Group Exhibitions (cont.)

2007 Cover Version, Curator Timothy Hull Art LA, Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles, CA

Other Exhibition Catalogs Featuring Works By Kimberly Brooks: “ Thread”, 2011 “The Stylist Project”, 2010 “ Technicolor Summer”, 2008 “ The Whole Story”, 2006