Rob Pruitt’s work is characterized by a fearless embrace of the present, social responsibility, and protean versatility. His output ranges from glitter canvases of panda bears, 2,922 paintings of President Obama painted one per day for each day in office, an eBay charity Flea Market, a Hollywood-style art awards ceremony, and a daily Instagram calendar of personal and public events.
Over the last decade, Pruitt has utilized gradient fields of color in different, evolving series of paintings. Early, gradient face paintings employ color symbolism to depict human emotion, and subsequent Suicide Paintings use gradients to form deep corridors of psychological space. Juxtaposed with the paintings, objects belonging to the artist himself create another type of self-portrait, and questions of artistic, signature style and value are brought up, as the viewer is beckoned to embark on an enthralling treasure hunt and journey through the manifold facets of Pruitt’s life and persona.
Rob Pruitt has shown internationally since the early 1990’s, with exhibitions at Rebuild Foundation, Chicago; Kunsthalle Zurich; the Brant Foundation in Greenwich; Aspen Art Museum; Dallas Contemporary; Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit; Freiburg Kunstverein; Le Consortium, Dijon; and group shows at Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; Tate Modern; and Palazzo Grassi, Venice. In 2011, Public Art Fund commissioned Pruitt’s Andy Monument, a chrome-plated, seven-foot-tall statue of Andy Warhol, in New York’s Union Square.
[excerpted from 303 Gallery website: www.303gallery.com]
