Rob Pruitt

303 Gallery is pleased to present its second exhibition with Rob Pruitt. On view are new works that chart the artist’s coming to terms with his milestone, 60th birthday. The exhibition includes new Calendar paintings, Date paintings, and a markedly personal iteration of the artist’s renowned Flea Market, in a self-reflective meditation on the passing of time.

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. With his multi-panel, Month of Sunsets paintings, gradients are used to depict the actual sunrise or sunset of a given day, dramatically mapping color on to time.

In his latest Calendar paintings, Pruitt combines daily sunrises and sunsets with journalistic self-portraits. The drawings depict day-to-day rituals such as shaving, the artist walking his dog, Gilda, and the artist preparing his morning oatmeal. In their stylistic variation, the drawings depict a protean self-image as Pruitt wrestles with the process of aging.

Accompanying the Calendar paintings are a new series of Date paintings. Drawing inspiration from On Kawara, these new works apply singular dates onto solitary gradient canvases. These time-stamped depictions of open sky direct the viewer to reflect on a moment in their own lives, which dissolves into a vast multitude of other lives and places.

On the floor of the gallery in front of the painting series is one of Pruitt’s celebrated Flea Markets. For the first time, the Flea Market is comprised of objects belonging to just the artist himself, creating another type of self-portrait. Through home goods, plants, clothing, and assorted curiosities, this Flea Market provides a glimpse into the artist's sense of style and taste. Juxtaposed with the paintings, 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 (b. Washington D.C., 1964) has shown internationally since the early 1990’s, with exhibitions at Rebuild Foundation, Chicago (2019); Kunsthalle Zurich, Zurich (2017); the Brant Foundation in Greenwich (2015); Aspen Art Museum (2013); Dallas Contemporary (2011); Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2015); Freiburg Kunstverein (2012); Le Consortium, Dijon (2002); and group shows at Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2012); Tate Modern (2009); Punta Della Dogana/Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2009). 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. He lives and works in New York City.