MARCH 12 - APRIL 30, 2009
Drive-Thru
6502 Laurel Canyon Boulevard
TRU-150-OC
Hackett-Freedman Gallery announces an exhibition of new paintings by Marc Trujillo, March 12–April 30, 2009. In this most recent body of work, Trujillo has taken the ubiquitous and mundane world of the North American drive-thru service industry and translated it into a series of pristine and surprisingly intimate paintings.
Like Trujillo’s large-scale investigations into contemporary culture's genericized consumer landscape, these smaller, compressed compositions show a deepening interest in Trujillo's idea of “placelessness,” the transitory experience of consumer environments that place us both somewhere and nowhere at the same time. The compositions are stripped of any identifying landmarks. They give no hint or indication of their geographical location and, with the exception of some gently suggested landscaping, are totally devoid of any natural or organic elements.
The carefully exaggerated frontality of the compositions transforms the exterior architecture of the industrial brick and glass facades, taking the physical window of the drive-thru itself and turning it into a metaphorical one. The paintings become little, disembodied window boxes in which time, space, and darkness are suspended. In these worlds, it is always light, albeit artificial, and there is always work to be done.
Unlike Trujillo’s larger paintings in which figures are smaller and more remote, the close depiction of these anonymous people generates a heightened emotional intensity. This emotive quality coupled with the hidden aesthetic qualities revealed by Trujillo’s careful brushwork and precise palette holds the viewer in attention. By putting a freeze-frame on what is meant to be a completely ephemeral and forgettable experience, Trujillo forces a reconsideration of the mindless commercial activities and daily interactions that make up much of contemporary life.
Marc Trujillo exhibits nationally on both coasts and is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2008 Rosenthal Family Foundation Award in Painting from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a 2001 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. Born in Albuquerque, NM, Trujillo currently resides in Los Angeles.