Artist-in-Residence

Robert Pruitt

Robert Pruitt, Untitled Photographs (detail), 2011. Archival pigment prints on rag paper. 72 x 88 inches.

Robert Pruitt’s work reflects his cultural duality as a black man living and working in Houston. His sculptures,such as Headdress with Lugar Pistol (2011), and the series of photographs created during his residency at FWM, Untitled Photographs (2011), deftly weave the simmering violence in contemporary American culture into a collaged narrative of tradition and pageantry. Pruitt’s intuitive approach to his FWM project included intensive research of early photography, popular culture, and science-fiction imagery, all of which resulted in a series of eight archival pigment prints. These “royal” portraits of a fictional African family’s ancestry portray how a member might present himself or herself to his or her public. FWM exhibited these photographs alongside objects that elaborate Pruitt’s collage of ideas: embellished costumes, headdresses, and guns that were worn by the “royal” family in their portraits.

Pruitt is known for his large, stark drawings: portraits on kraft paper, poetic odes to individuals simultaneously embracing and resisting the cultural codes of their childhood. The influence of stereotype can be insidious; the act of resistance is often quirky and deeply personal. Pruitt’s drawings capture this. With these new photographs and sculpture, Pruitt pushed his resistance into a fictional narrative past tense, intertwining current conceptual practice into the traditional idiom of the formal portrait, confronting an African past with an American present and creating a body of work that advances his practice significantly.

Artist Bio

American, born 1975. Lives in New York, NY. 

Best known for his large-scale portraits, Robert Pruitt investigates the intersections of history, spirituality, and pop culture to illustrate experiences of Black identity. Born in Houston, Texas, Pruitt received his BFA from Southern Texas University in 2000 and his MFA from the University of Texas at Austin in 2003. He has exhibited nationally including solo shows at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; the California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA; The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY. He has been featured in group shows at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; the Studio Museum, Harlem, NY; The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, MI; the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; and at the 2006 Whitney Biennial, New York, NY. Pruitt’s work is in numerous public and private collections including the Dallas Museum of Art, TX; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX; and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA. He is the recipient of the Idea Fund Grant, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Artist Grant, and the William H. Johnson Prize.