Rob Pruitt

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.

[6] 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.

[9] He explains his choice of subject matter thus: “I see it as a kind of corporate damage control -- like trying to market Perrier after they found benzene in it, or Firestone tires after they exploded.

Critic Michelle Grabner analyzes the panda project thus: “The paintings' clichéd imagery neutralizes their real endangered status making us less culpable in the creatures' pending extinction.

Instead, rainbows and butterflies have come to symbolize a magical new world where order is without hierarchies, edification is without snobbishness[…]Pruitt produces his art without the slightest glance of irony.

He makes glamorous and admirable our drive for worldly success while commiserating with our search for inner virtue.”[10] Although the paintings are designed and tightly crafted, they are imperfect; the artist's hand is evident.

His use of glitter has been compared to Andy Warhol's diamond dust, but Pruitt describes his own work as “basically blown up versions of dining table craft projects... I’ve really enjoyed letting the world know that not everything is so mystified or so regulated to expertise—that you can make something really beautiful with a little ingenuity and some supplies from Michael’s.”[8] Pruitt collaborated with Jimmy Choo in 2012 to create a line of shoes and handbags featuring panda bears and animal prints.

For the market's latest iteration, Pruitt is running an eBay store, which features a curated selection from his collection of secondhand objects.

Pruitt was inspired by the idea of rumspringa, a time when Amish youths leave their community to experience the broader world before returning to the church and responsibility.

Randy Kennedy describes a unifying theme to the multivalent show: “Everything in it seems to pivot on the idea of pattern and design as a valiant but usually doomed attempt to impose some order and beauty on a random, chaotic world.”[1] Pruitt has made a variety of paintings with colored gradients.

[19] These developed into a later series called “The Suicide Paintings,” window-like portals consisting of pure gradients juxtaposed by a differently colored frame.

Critic Florence Waters describes her experience with the work: "The absence of a story is made alarming by the scale and intensity of the encounter with colour on canvas.

In 2003 they bought a ramshackle, eleven-bedroom Victorian mansion in Fleischmanns, New York, painted it black, and decorated it like a haunted house with faux taxidermy and gothic furniture.

[21] Ken Johnson compared it to the self-mocking art-as-life collaborations of Gilbert and George but overall described the project, as it was presented in a 2003 exhibit at Gavin Brown's Enterprise, as "self-congratulatory.