NYAB Event - Rob Pruitt "Pop Touched Me:The Art of Rob Pruitt"

Rob Pruitt "Pop Touched Me:The Art of Rob Pruitt"

Gavin Brown's Enterprise

This event has ended.

On a Monday afternoon at the end of August 2006 I was on the corner of Greenwich and Leroy. I was with ten or so hired recent art-school graduates, a few hundred pairs of used blue jeans and a huge revolving cement truck. I was making figurative sculptures by filling the jeans with cement and bending and forming them into interesting configurations before they hardened. It was a real
circus! In the middle of all of this an attractive and friendly person stopped on her bicycle, introduced herself as Eva Prinz and asked what in the world was going on. I told her I was making my art show and that it was about to open in three days. I told her I'd be delighted if she came to the opening. She said she'd never seen anything so crazy and I could tell that she was kind. She came to my opening and invited me to make a book. Turns out she was a big-wig editor of art books at the legendary Abrams publishing house.

What a privilege the next year and a half ended up being as we set out making "Pop Touched Me," my very first monograph. Eva had invited me based on the craziness she encountered on the street that day and not on familiarity with my work. But she became the best student and soon thereafter a scholar of my shenanigans.

Everything that I wanted she loved and agreed to, including the rather silly title. I knew that I didn't want an essay penned by a big-name critic propping up my life's work as something very important because -- who knows. Instead I wanted to ask colleagues, friends, associates, enemies and frenemies each to contribute a word or line or two about me and my work. In the end I think I have a much more accurate account of what it is I do, what it is I've done. It's told by you and some of it is kind, some very kind, and some not so kind.

Last year when my father was in the hospital battling cancer I visited him frequently. Over the years what it was that I actually did for a living left him a little confused. He knew that I was an artist but what that meant always eluded him. Beer cans with stickers is art? Long lines of cocaine is art? Flea Markets and an old victorian house painted black are art? I think I continually failed him with my explanations. But as he lay dying, and as our conversations deepened, I proposed to him the idea of presenting his ashes as a sculpture for public view. Well, how would anyone respond to such a strange notion? His response was, "Oh, kind of like King Tut?" And then he finished with, "I finally get what kind of artist you are, Rob. You're an con artist."

I hope that you will pick up a copy of "Pop Touched Me: The Art of Rob Pruitt." And I hope that you like it. I really put myself into it. And a little of you, and a lot of us.

- Rob Pruitt