Hirschl & Adler Modern is proud to announce the opening of Marc Trujillo on Thursday, November 3, 2011. The artist’s first solo venture with the gallery will feature a new series of works in oil depicting Target interiors, Costco parking lots, fast-food restaurants, and reflective building fronts—places the artist refers to as “non-destinations, particularly North American kinds of nowhere,”at once ubiquitous and yet largely unseen.
Every detail in Trujillo’s fast-paced, consumer-driven environments is the result of slow painting, of careful and keen observation, both analytic and synthetic. Trujillo depicts his contemporary urban surroundings with such detail and lucidity that one feels instantly transported—somewhere, nowhere, to a place we all know, or think we know.
Although he uses photographs for reference, Trujillo’s paintings are not photorealistic. His three-dimensional space and myriad light sources cannot be found in a single camera shot or in the neutral, objective realism of a photograph. Instead, his paintings are based on direct observation, color sketches, and rigorous drawing, as well as dedication to the panoramic landscapes and interiors of seventeenth-century Dutch Masters. Trujillo cites artists such as Vermeer, Velazquez, and Rembrandt as inspiration for his craft of painting, and the importance of control over formal elements.
For Trujillo, light is what holds his paintings together as he creates shifting temperatures throughout the compositions where mood and atmosphere are carefully orchestrated. Like frames from a motion picture, Trujillo’s scenes and the characters in them are ultimately invented and placed with purpose.
Painting from what he calls “the middle ground of common experience,” Trujillo uses his environments as the foundation for a personal vision. Ever mindful that his paintings are neither “critique nor worship,” he distances himself from human dramas and avoids overt irony and fantasy. In spite of this, Trujillo’s scenes force us to look closely at the world around us, revealing truths that evoke discomfort or elicit thought and self-examination. Ultimately, Trujillo’s paintings are about painting. Interpretation is left to the viewer.
Born in Albuquerque in 1966, Trujillo received his B.F.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and his M.F.A. from Yale University. Since then, Trujillo has shown widely on both East and West coasts, including solo exhibitions in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. A recipient of the 2001 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, Trujillo was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 2008.
Marc Trujillo opens on Thursday, November 3 and runs through Saturday, December 3, 2011. Located in the landmark Crown Building at the world-famous corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, Hirschl & Adler Modern is open Tuesday through Friday, from 9:30 am to 5:15 pm, and Saturdays from 9:30 am to 4:45 pm.