“Big red letters spelling the word LOVE beckon from one wall of the gallery. They lead the gaze to a pair of binoculars clamped to the wall's freestanding edge. The binoculars are aimed at a nearby window that looks out onto the Damen/North/Milwaukee intersection, now dark and desolate in post-evening-rush-hour quietude. Accepting the invitation, I peer through the binoculars and see the word "LEAVE" spelled out in pale green neon in a third-floor window of the Flat Iron Building across the intersection. Somewhere in my body a vague memory of pain resuscitates. The physical and semantic distance between love and leave activates a feeling of nostalgic sadness that is both personal and cultural, visceral and cerebral. This deceptively simple piece, called Platitude #1 (Love/ Leave), is just one example of Adam Brooks's highly engaging approach to an aestheticized critique of language.”

Excerpt from a review of the 1991 exhibition at Abel Joseph Gallery, Chicago, by Lynda Barckert, Chicago Reader, 1 February, 1991.