72:, an early work in which she employed the photographic medium to address issues of alienation versus bodily presence in space. The work, which featured larger-than-lifesize nude figures in various poses of recline, was installed on Venice Beach, from which the figures appeared to half-emerge from the sand. During her graduate studies she constructed a series of flats which were shown at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1970 exhibition
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More recently Brooks has expanded her sculptural practice out from maquettes into large-scale sculptural reconstitutions of photo-based printed fabrics, creating a series of optically charged large-format abstract photographs. The sculptures serve as source material for, and exist peripherally to the
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Beginning in the late 1980s, Brooks began to translate her interest in appropriated and generic imagery to a literal process, incorporating ever-increasing levels of distance from the source material. The artist employed a black foam-based material she would refer to as a screen, which compressed and
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to stage film still-esque scenes of domestic interiors and dilemmas, often incorporating disarray or ambiguous circumstances within their three walls. Created using miniature figures and other ephemera from the everyday world, these were meant to recall both the rote "stock" characters of soap opera,
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transfers from photographic contact sheets. This installation "constituted a 'fourth generation' of the photographs," according to the artist. "The first generation was the negative; the second, the eight-by-10-inch contact sheet, the third, the machine copy of the contact sheet onto wax paper, and
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photographer. She began her career on the West Coast, and is associated with the Los
Angeles–based art community of the late 1960s and '70s. In 1982 she moved to New York, where her practice has since been based. Her work is known for its boundary-pushing forays into sculpture, and for her use of
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then-location on
Broadway. Using highly staged iconography appropriated from various cultural intersections of art and commerce, the display's location was meant to address the work's position to commercial interests, both metaphorically and in terms of its physical siting.
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flattened visual information. Placed between the camera and the subject, itself taken from advertising print, calendars and other reproductions, the screen acted as an additional point of interception between the initial object and its image.
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the fourth, the images glued onto the gallery walls." The work garnered significant attention during several of its stagings, due to the relative unguardedness of its young, unclothed subjects, all between the ages of ten and fifteen.
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grant twice, in 1979 and 1991, and served on the final NEA panel for photography, shortly before the collapse of the
Association's funding and subsequent dismantling of many of its programs.
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Following her MFA she moved to San
Francisco, where her use of the photograph continued a progression of investigations of scale and installation. Her next major work,
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and domestic dramas constructed from real life accounts and from magazines. The scenes were photographed and subsequently sized up once again. The series was shown at
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Ellen Brooks was born in Los
Angeles, California. She received both her bachelor's degree and her master's degree in Fine Arts from the
286:"Announcing Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974–1981 « the Curve | MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles"
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from the opposite direction, incorporating the viewer's vantage point from above to obfuscate the objects’ situation in space.
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In 1985, Brooks installed light boxes of photo transparencies as a site-specific window display at the
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screens and image altering pro-filmic photographic processes. She has shown at the
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In the late 70s and into the 1980s, Brooks worked on an extended series called
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exhibition as part of the
Pacific Standard Time citywide initiative, and in
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in the
Photography Department from 1985 to 2008, and has taught at the
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in 1982, and a selection of the works was also included in the 1983
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In 2011, she was included in two retrospective exhibitions: for
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at Cherry and Martin
Gallery. She lives and works in New York.
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Capitol Group
Corporation (commissioned project) New York
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Southeast Banking Corporation, Coral Gables, Florida
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University of California at Los Angeles, California
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219:Museo d’ Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, Mexico
210:Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio
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356:Ellen Brooks: Vintage Photographs from the 70s
319:Smithsonian American Art Museum - Ellen Brooks
204:San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California
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346:the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981”
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228:National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada
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165:among others. She was a recipient of the
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45:National Museum of American Art
351:Interview with Leslie Tonkonow
192:Museum of Modern Art, New York
33:Whitney Museum of American Art
22:(born February 3, 1946) is an
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341:Ellen Brooks Official Website
163:Rhode Island School of Design
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324:The Artists - Ellen Brooks
264:Willis Corroon Corporation
181:Photography into Sculpture
74:Photography Into Sculpture
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111:Barbara Gladstone Gallery
329:MutualArt - Ellen Brooks
258:Pitney Bowes Corporation
151:Tisch School of the Arts
252:Progressive Corporation
177:Under the Big Black Sun
255:Fred Alger Corporation
314:ArtNet - Ellen Brooks
159:School of Visual Arts
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29:Museum of Modern Art
143:final photographs.
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365:Categories
300:12 January
272:References
261:U.S. Trust
161:, and the
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174:LA MOCA's
106:maquettes
55:Biography
102:Tableaux
96:Tableaux
24:American
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