Kelsey Brookes

Throughout his career, Brookes has painted to explore the scientific concepts that make up the world, applying abstraction to the concrete and pushing the limits of reality. His vibrant, meticulously detailed paintings portray drug compounds, molecules, and atoms, and explore the cognitive and sensory activity that arises under altered or hallucinogenic states. In recent works, Brookes has been driven by symmetry and mathematic principles which govern nature. From this starting point, he studies both what it is about symmetry that attracts us and how its rules have been used to describe the behavior of particles and fields in the physical world. These meditative paintings contain an array of visual stimuli that first disorient and then organize around a perimeter of patterns and undulating lines. 

 

Often characterized by the influence of his early years as a molecular biologist, Brookes explores how our environment fixes our attention and in response, builds paintings using those same principles. 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 teamed up with RVCA, VANS, and Insight 51, among others for numerous projects. KELSEY BROOKES: Psychedelic Space is the first monograph of the artist’s artwork and examines three years of work and four solo exhibitions. His work belongs in esteemed private collections, as well as the public permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation.