Kaucyila Brooke at L.A. Center for Photographic Studies - Los Angeles, California - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

In "Not from one side Any Sort of Vanity," Kaucyila Brooke takes the low-end upholds of consumer culture--the plastic caps of do-it-yourself dye-job and residence perms--and matches them to the stature and scale of historical portraiture. In each of the 24 photographs that made up this novel show, a figure wearing an elasticized plastic cap is not absented at bust-length against a bright monochrome backdrop. The portraits, approximately twice life-size, flutter between serious depiction and obvious masquerade.

Brooke's sitters frequently seem to defy the glorious tackiness of the plastic hats they protoplast In Danielle, for example, a butch young woman in an orange work shirt and muscle tank top sports a floral cap entirely at unevens with the rest of her dres and demeanor. Danielle directs her gaze sharply off-frame and smirks at the camera, as if in disregard of the conventional femininity hinted by the cap. By combining seemingly incongruous collection of lawss of gender, Danielle forces us to think about the ways in which sexual difference is not solely assigned to, but also performed by dint of individual subjects.

Brooke's photographs ofttimes reference the poses and sustains of traditional oil painting. In Connie, for example, the subject's pink shower cap, resplendently put against a pale green backdrop, recalls a Jan van Eyck turban almost as a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of as it does a Woolworth's purchase. by the agency of combining the conventions of elite portraiture with the materials of everyday consumerism, Brooke sustains a palpable, plane pleasurable, tension between high and depressed culture.

The use of brightly colored backdrops clearly establishes these portraits as studio set-up At the same time, Brooke attends closely to the physical specificity of each sitter--to the fabric of skin, the pattern of freckle the guile of facial expression. The artist deftly spots the boundary between portraiture as an authentic revelation of the self and portraiture as a exhibition of performance. A series of well-crafted dialogues between artifice and identity animated Brooke's impressive show

COPYRIGHT 1997 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group