Rob Pruitt

Robert "Rob" Pruitt (born May 17, 1964) is an American post-conceptual artist. Working primarily in painting, installation, and sculpture, he does not have a single style or medium. He considers his work to be intensely personal and biographical.

Pruitt has exhibited extensively in New York and internationally; in 2013 the Aspen Art Museum held his mid-career retrospective.

Born in Washington, DC, Pruitt grew up in Rockville, Maryland. He attended Corcoran College of Art and Design, where he became friendly with the admissions director, Tim Gunn. Pruitt transferred to Parsons School of Design when Gunn began teaching there. During college, Pruitt lived at the Chelsea Hotel and says he focused his energy on partying rather than studying.

He currently resides in New York City with his partner Jonathan Horowitz, who is also an artist.

Pruitt began exhibiting in the early 1990s with his then collaborator, Jack Early. After a controversial exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery their partnership disintegrated and neither had major shows for several years.

While galleries refused to represent his solo work, Pruitt contributed to a few group shows. Pieces from this time dealt with his exclusion from the art world; his first sculpture at Gavin Brown’s enterprise was an Evian fountain, which, as Mia Fineman points out, is related to baptism and rebirth.

In 1998 Pruitt caused another minor scandal with a piece called Cocaine Buffet which was shown at The Fifth International, Chivas Clem's artists run space. The show was co-curated by Jennifer Bornstein. He installed a 16-foot mirror with a line of real cocaine running down the center, in which visitors were welcome to partake. Publicity stunt, peace offering, minimalist sculpture, or indictment of the greed and glamour of the art world, it changed the sensation associated with his name.

The following year Pruitt held his first solo show, “101 Art Ideas You Can Do Yourself,” where he applied humor to the genre of language-based conceptual art. The recipe-style book was filled with instructions for making and decorating such as “Paint secret paintings on walls with glow in the dark paint” and “Draw yourself into your favorite comic strip.” Others were suggestions on how to interact with the world in a different way, like “Sit on the toilet backwards” and “Go on an animal photo safari in a city: dogs, cats, pigeons, rats, and squirrels.”

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