Online Exhibition Curated for the Griffin Museum: Tierra Brava by Paul Turounet
In November 2015, jdc Fine Art gallery and art dealer was invited to curate an online exhibition for the Griffin Museum's Instagram account. We presented Tierra Brava, an artists' book by San Diego-based photographer Paul Turounet. Turounet’s work along the US/Mexico border has inspired several bodies of work and artist’s books. This online exhibition will explore the pages of one, Tierra Brava.
Tierra Brava is formatted after a passport and draws inspiration from the pulp comic of the same name. The book is contained in a brown-paper box with a “United States of Mexico” seal and is accompanied by ephemeral items, including a missing-person’s flier, half-completed marriage license, advertisement for wrestling match, 3-page hand-written note, and a folded map of Northern Mexico numbered to correspond to the book’s imagery.
The passport nature Turounet’s book and the roadmap casts us as the photographer on the road, but we find it easy to shift our relative position to the various subjects via the ephemera and powerful imagery. We engage stigmatized subjects like poverty, violence, and migration through a set of different lenses. The book reveals a glimpse of the state between states. Turounet navigates a psychological space mired in contradictions- a place that is in a constant search for its own sense of identity, juggling the traditions of culture and history of the interior with the pleasures and promises of prosperity and a better life of its northern neighbor.
Tierra Brava by Paul Turounet is one of our recommended contemporary art acquisitions. This book and other artist books by Paul Turounet can be purchased from the gallery’s online store.
Paul Turounet, Tierra Brava (book)