Zevitas Marcus is pleased to present Brazen, a solo exhibition of oil paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Kimberly Brooks.

Kimberly Brooks’ constructs scenes with singular gestures, marauding imagery of recognizable historical contexts to manifest something entirely new. Her work brings together traditional subject matter – the figure, landscape, interiors and still-life – with her own personal experiences to form a deft fusion of contemporary and historical concerns.

There has always been a palpable tension between abstraction and representation in Brooks’ work. Her most recent paintings veer ever more aggressively towards abstraction, which is used as a divide between experiencing the materiality of a particular history (Museum Wall) and falling inside the frame to experience the history at the time of depiction (Blue Angels).

While the work included in Brazen all arrives from recognizable source material, Brooks is less interested in reportage than she is in the ability of paint to directly conjure meaning. To this end, religious icons, grand interiors and ornamentation are all purposefully untethered from their traditional functions and allowed to embody a greater range of meaning within our contemporary culture. In Talitha, stark Joan of Arc hair and a sumptuous collar remain as the greatest signifiers of a faded princess. The facial details have fallen vague, effectively encouraging an audience to project their own narratives onto what is left behind. Brooks work is ultimately concerned with how painters see and process the visual remnants of history.

Kimberly Brooks graduated from UC Berkeley in Literature and worked as a writer before exchanging the pen for the brush. Brooks studied Painting at UCLA and OTIS. Her work has been showcased in numerous juried exhibitions including curators from Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, California Institute of the Arts and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Brooks lives and works in Los Angeles. This is her first solo exhibition with Zevitas Marcus.