Marc Trujillo

Drive-Thru is the title of this series of paintings titles originally exhibited at Hackett-Freedman Gallery in San Francisco, March 12–May 2, 2009. I made the first painting, which is the thumbnail for this collection and it sold right away. I wanted to show the work as a group, so I held onto the paintings as I completed them until I had enough to propose a show.

The text below is the press release which was written by Susan McDonough in collaboration with me:
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.