David Brooks Hits the Pavement | Art21 "New York Close Up"

[David Brooks, Artist]

[New York Close Up]

Well, I grew up in a small town.

Brazil, Indiana.

I came to New York in the mid-Nineties

to go to school at Cooper Union.

["David Brooks Hits the Pavement"]

And being a skater, I could just skate all
around town.

So I would go to all the museums,

have my skateboard with me,

and just check it at coat check.

I was a little backwards.

In fact, only the year before had I seen

my first piece of historical artwork in person.

I do recall, very starkly,

going to The Metropolitan Museum of Art

and discovering the ancestral totems
from the New Guinea area.

At first, they're very exotic looking.

But each one of those face is an actual person.

And when I realized what was behind them,

it definitely shattered a particular
preconceived idea as to what art was.

There was both the life around the artwork
during it being made.

There was the life around the artwork

and how it functioned in the society.

And there was a life around the artwork

as to how it got to the United States.

And so it's the life behind it

and the truth content within it

that is actually really quite extraordinary

and goes far beyond what it appears to be.

There was a piece I did at PS1

where I planted about fifty trees.

It's more of this, like,

cross section of an Amazonian forest.

And then we dumped, pumped, and sprayed

about twenty tons of concrete
on the entire forest.

[LAUGHS]

It's more of an action

than it is a composition

or an object.

And it's one that is both horrifying

and has some beauty to it at the same time.

The forest then regrew over time,

as it would break through
elements of the concrete.

And had a whole life cycle that went on
for a year and a half.

We're so desensitized to imagery of violence,

both in terms of a landscape,

but also in terms of a culture.

So what the project really is looking at

is trying to find ways to tether reality
right back to it.

Just like skating,

there is no ideology behind hitting the pavement.

That's just you and your body
hitting the pavement

in a kind of reality check.

The skating started...

I was quite young
and I was really bad at it.

And my brother, I remember,

made fun of me at one point.

He's like, "You've been skating that long
and you still suck?"

So, there was a turning point
at around the age of thirteen

that I became extremely disciplined.

I had this thing where I had to
learn a trick a day.

I used to sneak out of the house,

like, at two in the morning,

and drive up to Chicago or...

[LAUGHS]

or drive down to Louisville.

So skateboarding, for me,
was the most fulfilling

when you would find a new situation
in an urban context

and you think of a different way to use it.

It propels one to want to actually
go out in the world and explore.

[The Explorers Club]

The Explorers Club is a private club

that was founded in 1904

by a number of people that were embarking
on these different endeavors

and they kind of needed a center

where they could come together

to have what they call a "smoker"--

where they would meet and discuss
what kind of expeditions they've been doing.

So it was a place to disseminate information.

At the time of its founding,

there were people, of course,
racing to the poles--

North and South--

trying to get to the top of the
tallest mountain on earth,

Mount Everest.

Eventually, to get to the Moon.

But as these people were
racing to the great firsts

they were kind of passing up
all of the rest of life

along the way.

And so, I think now we've come to

a completely different understanding

as to how to perceive
the definition of exploration.

Now it's really about those granular,

infinitesimal minutiae aspects of life

that really are the things that
make up the world.

A combine is basically a piece of
farming equipment

that cuts corn,

breaks the kernels of the corn off the cob,

and then sifts and rasps
the cobs and the stalks,

but also cleans the grain.

The exhibition breaks apart this
piece of machinery

into thousands of pieces.

It takes time and movement going around
and looking at everything.

Just like an ecosystem, it's not really

something you can just show up
and stand in front of and experience.

It's actually a number of processes that,
over time,

you understand, experience,
and you put it back together.

Taking the macroscopic whole
into the microscopic details

that make up this one thing

that also does many operations all at once.

There's an infinite number of variations

of things one can do with a skateboard.

And it never quite ends,

so it will always keep going,

the more you put into it.

I thought that at one point

I was going to be a professional skateboarder.

But a girl broke my heart,

and I just started making art

quite intensely.

And I realized I was just better at
making artwork

than I was at skateboarding.