Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce JOHN BROOKS: Thinking About Danger, the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, on view from July 23 through September 3, 2022. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, July 23rd, from 5:00 to 8:00 pm. 

The paintings in Thinking About Danger combine images and inspiration from art history, cinema, literature, music, and the artist's personal life to explore longing and remote desire, empathy and connection. The richness of experiences as well as a kind of "existential openness" is alluded to in the exhibition’s title which is taken from a painting of the same name and borrows lyrics from the Marianne Faithful song “Times Square.” Their subjects are our lives: what is and what can be, the known and the unknown. These are not ordinary paintings—they are meant for all of us—and the reading and understanding of them need not be ordinary. In truth, they invite us to lose ourselves in their openness and, as the Sufi poet Rumi enjoins, “come out of the circle of time and into the circle of love.” These and other subjects are discussed below by Brooks in his own words.

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I have always been primarily moved by connections, and what I call emotional resonance. Above everything else, it’s that that I care about. In addition, I’ve always had disparate interests—I’m a painter, poet, and a former competitive golfer with a political science degree. About mid-year last year, I began to understand that I could use and combine these interests in my work and make better work as a result. It’s a sort of collage approach; collage has always been a part of my artistic practice—my painting practice changed tremendously in 2018 when I began to use paper collages as the basis for my compositions. I’m not currently making any collages but am still using this mindset. I found great strength and an almost limitless number of ideas in using this approach, and it also utilizes my knowledge and memories and creates something that feels entirely new.

For example, I’m quite sure that Lil Nas X and Stefan Zweig and Thomas Mann have never been presented together—but why shouldn’t they be? Painting allows me to imagine alternative realities. Each man brings cultural weight with them, and the combination feels (to me) exciting, unexpected, electric. This is why I use a lot of found imagery and “known” people. I don’t think of my work as celebrity portraits or even relying on celebrity—each person is chosen for specific reasons—because they have meaning to me, or meaning in our culture. There’s power in that, and power in using that cultural weight to create something new, or to shift the conversation in a direction that interests me. The figures, subjects, and scenes are touchstones and nodes of connection, people and things that I carry with me, but I am ultimately interested in their realness—inasmuch as I can access it—rather than the personas.

I recently heard a quote from the singer songwriter Joe Henry, who said that as artists, “it’s never our job to dispel mystery.” I think that’s true. Art does hold answers, but they’re slippery, hard to grasp, and maybe ultimately knowable. That’s what makes art, or works of art, compelling to me. When I am thinking about my compositions, I like the idea of creating an image or a scene that seems like it might start to make sense, perhaps narrative sense, but then disintegrates the closer one gets to getting ahold of an answer. I don’t want the works to be answers, I want them to be hints, or even scents. I hope they contain multitudes, exhibit a thoughtful exploration and depiction of my Queer community—particularly Queer artists—as well as allies. Ideas related to impermanence, the fragility of existence, the complexities of identity, are all explored. I think they’re also, in a way, an antidote to the rigidity of our times, and the rigidity that so many people seem to crave. Life—existence—isn’t like that! It is, in so many ways, unknowable, and that’s ok. It’s beautiful and even comforting. I hope the works contain all of that—complexity, humor, irreverence, poignancy, tenderness, sadness, sexiness.

The paintings are also an exploration of Queer Time (written about by Garth Greenwell in the New Yorker). I’m 44, and I grew up at a time during which I didn’t feel entirely capable of embracing my Queerness (even that word is a new thing). I feel like I’m still learning every day, reaching backward and forward, finding connection with anyone I can, anyone whose head and heart seems to mirror with my own. The works are intentionally becoming more Queer, which is a reflection of my self, but that doesn’t mean their relevance narrows—I think it’s the opposite. Because I am expanding, the work is expanding. Because it encompasses more things, that has to mean it has more relevance to more people. Paradoxically, the weirder and more specific it becomes, the wider it becomes.