Kimberly Brooks

Kimberly Brooks is an American artist and author. Her work blends figuration and abstraction with a focus on subjects related to memory, reality, history, representation, and identity.

"I knew the minute the pandemic ended enough to allow travel that the first city I wanted to go back to in the world was Jerusalem. I had visited in 2017 and haven't been able to get it out of my mind since. Traces of those visions, the spirituality and curiosity grew in me like the wisteria that I saw cascading over the balconies of the hotel that framed the old city like a painting.

I started collecting accounts of people who encountered it through out history. Depending how far one goes back, it transforms from semi forgotten holyland to the vibrant city it is now.

Everything that isn’t marvellously old is sparkling and new like the smooth new black highways that lead to it. Arches and domes frame almost every street and landscape, anointing every stone and plant as if to say, yes, you are but one of a million eyes and hearts and souls that existed here but you are the newest, one tiny fringe of a long shawl woven throughout time.

Next to the wailing wall, there is an excavation site with scaffolding allows any visitor to see years of history and civilizations and wars and an extraordinary amount of archeological findings. When I returned this summer, the scaffolding turned into sleek walkways replete with an underground temple with floorboards underlit like room in the last scene in of Kubrik’s 2001 Space Odyssey." - Kimberly Brooks

View Works by Kimberly Brooks

Jerusalem by Kimberly Brooks is a part of a series on the subject, and is currently on view in the gallery.

Slater Bradley

The youngest male artist to have been honoured with a solo show at the Guggenheim in New York, eclectic multi-platform artist Slater Bradley’s recent work created between 2018 and 2020, "The Gates of Many Colors", and his new series, the "Hypercosmic Temple", explore the ancient idea of the spiritual pilgrimage and quest for divine knowledge in contemporary terms.

Through uniform, vibrant, acrylic color applied by hand over the negative space of the gates and sky, and the color's relationship to the vibrational energy centers of the body, the Artist offers the viewer a deeper “seeing” of what lies beyond the gates of Jerusalem. Using a dye sublimation transfer process, digital photographs that Bradley recorded of the gates during the three day period of the winter solstice are enlarged, printed and permanently dyed directly into the fibers of the specialized polyester fabric

Bradley emphasizes the materiality and permanence of this transmuting process by sewing thread across the lower threshold of each painting as a reference to the visible light spectrum, the chakra energy system of the body, and astrological time, stitching together divine narratives from the Genesis story "Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors" to day-to-day contemporary life. The cosmic, spiritualized energy of the Holy City of Jerusalem envelopes the viewer, illuminating the state of one's being.

You don't worship the gate, you can go into the inner temple.
 — Ram Dass

The spiritual journey through time and space continues in Bradley's "Hypercosmic Temple" (2021), where we find a recently, partially reconstructed 7th century. B.C.E Grecian Temple dedicated to the Sun God Apollo on the small uninhabited island of Despotiko located in the heart of the Aegean. Framed in brass in the exact measurements of the Golden Rectangle, the twelve small, vertical "shields" depict the resurrected Apollo Temple, painted over in black, blue, gold, silver, and rust colored marker by the Artist, obscuring, or more aptly, shielding some of the restored architectural elements in an allusion to the methodologies of archeology, time and the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Bradley locates us here so that we can meditate on Plato's Allegory of the Cave, and the Platonic concept of a second, "hypercosmic" sun located beyond our own astronomical sun and the realm of the fixed stars, which is theorized to illuminate the true nature of the world.

Created right before and right after the worldwide lockdown, Bradley's work on the spiritual quest takes on greater significance. What world lies beyond our cave? Is this reality simply a simulation or a matrix of projection? Where will the rough ascent of consciousness lead us in this new world? For the intuitive Artist, the answers to these mysteries vibrate through the gates and within the temple.

Slater Bradley, Hypercosmic Temple, installation view at MMFA for the exhibition HYPERCOSMIC, Nov 2021 - Apr 2022

More Artworks by Slater Bradley

2022-2023 Exhibitions + Events

November 4, 2022 | 4-7pm
ArtWalk El Paseo

First Fridays return and El Paseo is kicking off the season in our sculpture garden on the corner of El Paseo and San Luis Rey. This is a monthly evening of events all along the district each First Friday, November 2022 through May 2023. Click here for more information.

November 6, 2022 | 3-4pm
The Foundation Express

Benefiting the Desert Sands Educational Foundation. Click here to purchase your ticket.

November 26, 2022 | 4-7pm
I Love the Light in California

Annual group exhibition featuring California-based artists Lisa Bartleson, Kelly Berg, Anthony James, Leo Marmol, Andy Moses, Elizabeth Orleans, Ruth Pastine, and Norton Wisdom with Reflect - Palm Desert, an interactive public performance by Andrea Stanislav.

December 8, 2022 | 4-7pm
PS Portrait Project

Exhibition of the PS Portrait Project by Anthony-Masterson Photography

March 17, 2022 | 4-7pm
TAG

35 Years of Art to End AIDS: Selected Works from TAG's Limited Art Editions Collection

May 5, 2022 | 4-7pm
Annual Idyllwild Arts Academy Student Exhibition

This special exhibition will include artworks by students in grades 9 through 12. 100% of artworks purchased at the Idyllwild Arts Academy Student Exhibition go directly to the student artists. Artists and faculty will be in attendance.