Kelsey Brookes | Perception & Hallucination
Quint Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Kelsey Brookes: PERCEPTION & HALLUCINATION. The exhibition opens on Saturday, December 7th with a public reception from 5 to 7PM. The artist will be in attendance.
Brookes says of his Veil series: "These paintings represent my first departure from empirically derived concepts in the last 5 years. The Veil paintings were inspired by my first hand, experiences with Insight Meditation, which at first had me very confused, and mostly still does. I found myself contemplating and feeling things that as a scientist and a materialist I was not totally comfortable with. Questioning my existence each morning was a new perspective to say the least. So I decided to make art about it."
Also on view will be paintings from the series Form Constants, a concept developed by Heinrich Klüver, a psychologist who systematically studied recurrent patterns observed by users of mescaline during hallucinations, near-death experiences and other altered states of consciousness. There were four basic patterns of visual perception that emerged: tunnels, spirals, lattices and cobwebs. Rooted in our collective unconscious, these Form Constants have become templates for Brookes to overlay with the exact shapes of drug molecules (mescaline, psilocybin, etc.), and grant access to such visual experiences. With these new Form Constant paintings, Brookes presents the primordial brain at work, zooming down to a microscopic level where mental cobwebs have never looked so good.
Brookes has had solo exhibitions in La Jolla, Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, London and Berlin. His work was featured as the cover art for the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 2012 “I’m With You” 7” records and The Flaming Lips’ 2013 “Stone Roses” LP. Brookes has collaborated up with RVCA, VANS, and Insight 51, among others for numerous projects. His paintings were featured in the publications SKULL STYLE: Skulls in Contemporary Art and Design, GO WEST!: Cutting-edge creative in the United States. Brookes’ work belongs in esteemed private collections, as well as the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation.
