galerie laurent mueller

Facts and Fictions

The galerie laurent mueller is pleased to announce its second solo exhibition of the English artist James Brooks.

It could be said that one can instantly recognise the trace of James Brooks’ artistic interventions, as well as some recurrent techniques among the exhibited series of drawings, prints and a video/sound installation.

But whilst looking closer, some works which could be mistaken for drawings are actually more similar to paintings with their successive geometric layers of clear lacquer that Brooks uses in the series of works on canvas titled Invisible Cities - 2013.

The exhibition at the gallery shows us how the artist utilises public information of varying cultural status to explore the manipulation and recontextualisation of the material’s inherent properties—critiquing the polar ideas of truth and speculation within formal public information. Furthermore, how seemingly factual data can lead us to fiction.

For his new audiovisual installation 21 Nocturnes des titres du ‘Monde’ - 2013, Brooks uses a mathematical procedure to translate the letters from Le Monde newspaper headlines into musical notes played on a piano, referring to Chopin’s Nocturnes. Also, a series of prints titled Pillars of Hercules - 2013 start with the telephone numbers of European Union embassies which are transcribed into fictitious telephone call logs between the various embassies. This results in a succession of potently arranged numerical statistics on A4 paper referring to the bureaucratic system which is, amongst other issues, so characteristic of our times.

James Brooks, in the solo exhibition Facts and Fictions, wants to integrate today’s political and societal resonances into his seemingly homogenous oeuvre and works incessantly by playing with the system-based strategies and art historical references within the works.



James Brooks, born 1974 in Devon, lives and works in London
MA of fine Arts at Chelsea College of Art, he received the Arts Council grant in 2006 and his work can be found in the collections of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt as well as of David Roberts and Frédéric de Goldschmidt among others. His solo exhibitions include Reporter, Platform-A, Middlesbrough in 2013, The Information Exchange, Domobaal, London, 2012, Mass, Galerie Martina Detterer, Frankfurt and Folks, galerie laurent mueller, Paris in 2011. As well as his most recent group exhibitions Give me five, Städel Museum, Frankfurt in 2013, Correspondances, galerie laurent mueller, Paris, and The Artist’s Postcard, Spike Island, Bristol in 2012.


A catalogue will be published on the occasion of the exhibition.