‘An Italian Solider looks in disbelief yesterday at the devastation caused by a lorry bomb’ 2006, Acrylic, graphite, gesso on panel. 111cm x 148cm. © copyright Cheryl Brooks and courtesy of Spectrum London.

Spectrum London reveals the first UK solo exhibition of Barcelona based painter Cheryl Brooks who re-works Renaissance paintings as well as current events newspaper photographs. Cheryl Brooks is influenced by the idea of repetition in photography, using only anonymous photographs of people found in the day’s news, she examines how the portraits of war and history have the ability to repeat themselves. In spite of shifting geographical landscapes and passing time, the images remain a documentation of cyclical events. “Perspectiva” means “to see through” in Latin, and Brooks deconstructs traditional images on the canvas to find another viewpoint. Like the Renaissance artists who first discovered perspective drawing, she is attracted to the mathematical representations of 3D space. By using this structured system of geometry, the illusion of 3D space projected on a 2D surface is created. It is the contrast between a painting, which serves as a constructed authenticity; and a photograph, a snapshot of reality that attracts her as an artist to assemble these idealized paradigms. Brooks highlights the vast disparity between the world we envision through art, and the reality we inhabit. Cheryl Brooks commented, “When looking at an image, with its fixed viewpoint, however good the illusion, it has very little to do with our experience of the world”.