David Brooks

David Brooks’s work investigates the relationship between individuals and their built and natural environments, challenging the terms under which nature is perceived. His large-scale sculptures and installations are typically fabricated in materials used in urban infrastructure such as concrete, stainless steel and hardware machinery. Brooks questions what he describes as the ‘disconnect’ between projections or ideas of the environment, and the reality, and aims to counter a perceived lack of empathy, in which the natural world becomes a hypothetical, removed concept. His industrially-informed structures are frequently installed outdoors, in surroundings that highlight the dichotomous relationship between man and nature, such as urban parks or, as in the case of his acclaimed concrete stampede of animals, before it was moved to a gallery space, in the midst of an area populated by wild sea birds.

David Brooks has been the subject of solo exhibitions at CLAGES, Cologne, NADA New York Special Projects, New York, American Contemporary, New York, Centro Medico Santagostino, Milan, Italy, and Armory New York, amongst others. His work has been included in group exhibitions at Marlborough Chelsea, New York, Rubell Family Collection, Miami, Galerie für Landschaftskunst, Hamburg, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, MVSEVM, Chicago amongst others. He presented his work Preserved Forest (2010) in MoMA PS1’s 2010 Greater New York show. In 2011, David Brooks showed his critically acclaimed Desert Rooftops, as part of an Art Production Fund commission in the Last Lot in Times Square. 

Courtesy of CASS Sculpture Foundation