(Ex)change
March 17 - April 28, 2012
Opening Reception: March 17, 6-8 pm
Artist Talk: April 14, 4 pm
Opening Reception: March 17, 6-8 pm
Artist Talk: April 14, 4 pm
The NARS Foundation is pleased to present Tori Purcell's first solo exhibition in New York. As a non-profit arts organization committed to supporting emerging artists and curators, NARS provides an array of creative support services and professional development opportunities for underrepresented artists from around the world. Reflecting this mission, the annual Juried Solo Exhibition Program provides visual artists who have a strong body of work with the opportunity to present their work to a wider audience. The program aims to nurture creative inspiration and foster innovative cross-pollination of ideas by presenting the most thought provoking and visually compelling artwork being produced today. Tori Purcell is a conceptual artist and photographer originally from Virginia. We are very excited to be able to present her sculpture and photographic series, most of which have not been shown in New York before. In this exhibition, Purcell examines issues of migration, cultural displacement and the socio-political constructs that form / transform identity and links them to a globalized economic system. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Vanderbilt University and a Master of Fine Arts from Savannah College of Art and Design. She is currently Acting Assistant Chair in the Photography Dept. at Pratt Institute and Adjunct Professor of Photography at Queensborough Community College.
Eun Young Choi, Program Director
NARS Foundation
In her photographs and installations Tori Purcell delves into the world of things, investigating how identity is formed and transformed through the everyday objects that populate our lives. Though based in specific contexts – the home of a Cuban immigrant or the small-town landscape of the southeastern United States – her documentary images allude to more general patterns of social and economic exchange. Ever conscious of the inextricable bonds between local and global, Purcell offers cool and composed commentary on the material culture of contemporary America. Purcell's work was selected from over 130 submissions to the New York Art Residency & Studios Foundation's inaugural Juried Solo Exhibition. The breadth and quality of all these entries suggest rich possibilities for this promising new program, through which the Foundation's commitment to emerging artists continues to grow. I am proud to have served as the show's first juror and, through it, to have been exposed to such talented young artists as Purcell.
Nat Trotman, Associate Curator
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
(Ex)change looks at international trade from the African Diaspora to the modern day global economy and within that highlights social and cultural consequences. The installation piece, Dialectic, acts as the centerpiece of the exhibition. Raw materials including sugar, coffee, corn, poppy seed, soy and petroleum oil are used to create a linked chain expanding more than 50 feet in length. Dialectic draws the comparison between slaves brought to the New World to work the land for agricultural production and the inhabitants of countries today who cultivate agricultural goods as trade commodities in the global economy. The title of the piece references Hegel's theory of the same name, which simply stated, is that social phenomena repeat themselves in history in a contemporary manner, exceeding that which came before it. With Dialectic acting as an anchor, the photographic series, Neither Here, sits on the periphery, telling the story of a modern immigrant and what is lost en route from his native country to his new one. Combining the familiar with the foreign, simple still lives are used to represent the mergence of two varying cultures. The apparent contrast between object and environment comes to represent an immigrant's hybrid identity, forever linked to his native land but now as an outsider.
Tori Purcell, Artist
