Skyscapes

303 Gallery is pleased to present our third solo exhibition of new work by Rob Pruitt. The exhibition is comprised of time-based works from the artist's ongoing investigations of the spectral gradient. Paintings and works on paper, scaled from intimate to grand, capture moments, hours, days, months, and years. Each day of the show has a different title. It opens as Skyscapes, and on each subsequent day, Pruitt improvises and announces the next title. Pruitt has utilized gradient fields of color in different, evolving series of paintings since 2012. In Pruitt’s Suicide Paintings, gradient fields within gradient frames suggest doors or windows, forming deep corridors of psychological space. Void of figuration and monumental in scale, the Suicide Paintings radiate intensity and possess a meditative quality. The latest gradient works employ actual, functioning clocks, with the clock face and frame painted to correspond with a moment in time. A row of 12 clocks run in sync, with the first clock painted to represent the darkness of midnight. Each subsequent clock is painted to track the progression of the day in 2-hour intervals. When the hour strikes for the time of day that the clock represents, the hands of the clock fade away into the colors of the clock face. With Pruitt's multi-panel 24 Hour Paintings, gradients are used to map time with color. Based on his diaristic iPhone photos of the sky, these paintings are comprised of 24 canvases, each panel representing an hour of the day. The colors are meticulously mixed and spray painted to encapsulate the movement of light. In a new calendar series indebted to On Kawara’s Date Paintings, Pruitt uses the iconic Massimo Vignelli Stendig calendar as a framework for the natural world, rendering each morning’s sunrise in watercolor. Gone are the appointments, events and reminders written in each box – instead, the spaces serve as an open ended, animation of passing time. All of the works in the show reflect the impulse to capture fleeting moments of time. Another way to capture time is to caption it, as Pruitt does with the activity of changing the title of the show daily. As abstract and open to projection as the works are, this suggestion of shifting one’s perspective conveys the notion that the works can be refreshed ad infinitum. On view in the gallery’s project room is a new video work by Jonathan Horowitz titled Father land: Wilhelm Reich, Jacques Morali, et al. which explores the psychology of hyper masculine gender identity, both as it took root in gay culture in the 1970s, and as it is manifested in authoritarian political ideology. 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.