David Brooks

Biography

David Brooks is an artist whose work considers the relationship between the individual and the built and natural environment. His work investigates how cultural concerns cannot be divorced from the natural world, while also questioning the terms under which nature is perceived and utilized. Often displacing infrastructural frameworks to draw comparisons with natural processes, his sculptural interventions are more enacted than constructed – better read as performative scenarios than disembodied compositions.

Brooks is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Rome Prize, a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a research grant to the Ecuadorian Amazon from the Coypu Foundation, and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship.

Notable Teaching Experience

Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore

Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Parsons The New School for Design, New York

Columbia University, New YorkHaverford College, Haverford

Notable Solo Exhibitions

Umwelts 2019 As the Crow Flies at Cheekwood Museum of Art (Nashville, 2019)

Continuous Service Altered Daily at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, 2017)

A Proverbial Machine in the Garden at Storm King Art Center (New Windsor, 2013)

Gap Ecology Three Still Lives with Cherry Picker and Palms at Socrates Sculpture Park, with "Marfa Dialogues/NY" (New York, NY 2013)

Desert Rooftops, Art Production Fund at Last Lot (New York, 2011)

Notable Group Exhibitions

Symbiosis, curated by Beth Rubin DeWoody at Berkshire Botanical Garden (Berkshires, 2022)

The Flag Project, Climate Museum and United Nations Environment Program at Rockefeller Center (New York, 2022)

Cinque Mostre at American Academy in Rome (Rome, 2020)

Collateral Event of the 58th International Art Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia, Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Penitenti (Venice, 2019)

Indicators: Artists on Climate Change at Storm King Art Center (New Windsor, 2018)

Changwon Sculpture Biennale (Changwon, 2012)

Press

He has been featured in The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, New York Times, Artforum and Bomb Magazine, among others.