NADA House 2023

FIERMAN presents “The DMZ Photographs, from the Collection of Larry V. Nurre, Selected by Dominic Nurre,” the second iteration of an extended conceptual portrait of American conservative masculinity realized through the possessions of the artist’s late father.

Upon his father’s death, Nurre inherited a large collection of taxidermy hunting trophies from both the American West and Africa, a leather bound collection of the National Rifle Association’s American Rifleman, US Army paraphernalia including film and photographs, among other personal effects. The artist has extrapolated from these objects a materialist portrait, a record of late twentieth century American masculinity. The project is at once deeply intimate and intellectually remote, the objects removed from their personal, private context and displayed as cultural artifacts to be examined. The project is open-ended, as Nurre continues to interrogate his father’s possessions and their cultural implications.

Selected for NADA House 2023 on Gov Island, and in consideration of the island’s history as an Army base, are a series of photographs taken in 1969-70 while Nurre’s father was enlisted with the United States Army along the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Frames for the photographs are made of white pine molding that has been hand carved into an exaggerated faux bamboo motif. Their archival matting is 8-ply. A male mannequin modeling a brass punch bowl from Korea and a type M1 US Army helmet is presented alongside the framed photographs.