CHARLESTON, SC.- The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston presents a solo exhibition called Marc Trujillo: American Purgatory that will be on view from August 25 – October 7, 2017. American Purgatory features more than 30 paintings by the Los Angeles-based painter Marc Trujillo.

The paintings of Marc Trujillo portray quotidian scenes: fast food restaurants, big box store aisles, the long terminal corridors of airports, and so on. The scenes are remarkably unremarkable. In their ubiquitous nature, the paintings present an anti-place: scenes that refer not to a specific place, but to uncannily similar tableaus that unfold everyday in communities across America. While Trujillo models his paintings after specific locations, usually in the Los Angeles area, his scenes appear strikingly similar to viewers’ own relationships with local commerce. His paintings critique a hallmark of modern capitalism: one that aims to recreate identical commercial experiences across the country.

Trujillo’s work is also influenced by his interest in Flemish landscape painting. The expansive skies in his works reflect the panoramic views in Johannes Vermeer’s View of Delft, 1661 or the more imaginative Landscape with the Flight into Egypt, c. 1650, by Aelbert Cuyp. Like Vermeer’s canvas, which offers a contemporaneous view of a growing city of Delft, Trujillo’s paintings explore our own ever-changing—and increasingly homogenous—landscape.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a brochure featuring an essay by Robert Storr. Currently a professor at Yale University School of Art, Storr was formerly Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York from 1990-2002 and visual director of the Venice Biennale from 2005-2007.