Riotous Scatalogical Pop and Serene Suicide Paintings From Rob Pruitt at Gavin Brown

One of Rob Pruitt's couches at Gavin Brown

By Bryant Rousseau

The protean Rob Pruitt is one of the more interesting artists working today, and his comeback the last few years from having fallen out of favor in the art world for a 1992 exhibition (done in collaboration with Jack Early) that was deemed racist by some critics, seems complete.

His latest show at Gavin Brown has one of the most appropriate titles I can remember: "Multiple Personalities." The first room is stuffed with works that exemplify Pruitt's scatalogical pop: a half-dozen are so actual couches whose every inch is covered by cartoons, many in the R. Crumb vein, of orgies, pop-culture icons and graffiti-style, art-world messages, like "Julian Schnabel is my life coach." This is the ultimate art for a couch potato who wouldn't even need a TV--he could spend many enjoyable hours just watching the Pruitt Show on which he seats.

Rob Pruitt Couch (detail)

Rob Pruitt's Studio Tables

This first gallery also offers upright tables, ostensibly from Pruitt's studio, whose entire surfaces are smothered with images.

Why is "Multiple Personalities" such a perfect title? Less so because of the numerous allusions to mental illness in the works' titles and subjects. More so because of one the most abrupt tonal shifts in art world history, something akin to the switch from black-and-white to color in "The Wizard of Oz."

Move from the first gallery to the second, and the intense, hyperactive mood gives way to a zen-like

Two of Rob Pruitt's "Suicide Paintings"

calm: Pruitt's "Suicide Paintings" series, displayed in a gallery covered with sand, are as serene as the couches are chaotic. Truly hard to believe these works are the output of the same mind, in the same time period. And contrary to their title, these paintings did not want to make me take my life, but to be thankful for my continued ability to see. I loved them, and I loved the overwhelming contrast.

A Rob Pruitt "Therapy Painting"

The final room of "Therapy Paintings" closes the show on a flat note. Having to spend too much time looking at these, which look like the work of a two-year-old in the midst of a temper tantrum,
would make me want to end my life. But even these failures engendered more respect for Pruitt--the guy is producing a ton of art, and it's hard to fault him too much for missing the mark with some of his efforts (though speaking of effort, he could have made all the dozen or so Therapy Paintings in the space of about, I don't know, two hours of frenzied scrawling).

See Everything, Say Something Rating: An A+ for effort, but the cumulative total nets a solid 68.