By sleek, circular traces and soft shade, Robert Pruertt Creates portraits that invite viewers in a magical world. Dragged into a mix of charcoal, continuation and pastel, his works rooted in stories telling and how personal story provides insight into wider, more collective questions about southern culture, rituals and avoided identities.
The artist brings models to his Harlem studio and photographs them that attract extensively built costumes. His drawings stem from these sessions, although Pruitt prefer a monumental scale. Dishe on paper painted with coffee, the portraits extend from seven feet, their meticulous shadow and line work chased by washes of the characteristic warm tint.
A recent self -portrait presents the artist in his characteristic novelty glasses, the dazzling X -ray lenses resting on his forehead. His hands, instead of his face, are the subject of this ten-foot-wide work, and each wears gold jewelry, his hometown represented on a Rockets ring in Houston. The title nods at the character of Herman Smith, played by Richard Pryor in the 1978 retelling The beautiful wizard of Oz” Wiz.
Included is prominently present in the works of PruTt and serves a double goal: it offers a means to dig up questions about identity, culture, place and time and also offers an opportunity to find something “fun and strange to draw,” he says. Recurring motives such as lemons, mushrooms, snakes and birds are a more recent addition to his portraits, and they often envelop the central figure. In “Princess with a plague of grackles”, for example, the typical Texan being is on the shoulders and arms of a sitting woman.
“Recently I have thought more about the body as a continuous way with the world. Our body takes things, let things out – and that process, for me, indicates a kind of equality with everything around us,” Pruits to tell Colossal.
Connecting to nature also calls on the divine and refers to the constellation of the artist of references, whether it is his interest in science fiction, comic books, music or his lasting love for “swampy, moist Houston, Texas,” he adds.
I think that part of it is nostalgia, especially in contrast to my life now in New York City. I miss at home … At a certain level, these works feel like a staging of the reasons for my own origin story – originating from a complicated metropolis that also feels deeply nationwide. A kind of Eden, but a filled with mosquitoes and stray dogs. Nature not so cute or reassuring but indifferent – and still holy.
If you are in New York, you can see PruTt’s work in a solo exhibition that is named after a Sun Ra Libretto, … Son … sun … Sin … syn … Zen … Zenithbee Salon 94. Find more of the artist on His website And Instagram.
