ROBERT PRUITT: FLIGHT RISK

Koplin Del Rio is pleased to announce Robert Pruitt’s third solo exhibition, Flight Risk.

This latest grouping of mixed media drawings were created by Pruitt while at the prestigious Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts residency in Omaha, Nebraska this past year. The show features works on paper in a variety of scales with a combination of hand-dyed or coffee toned paper and charcoal and pastel. In addition to signature portraits blending elements of science fiction and technology with traditional African patterns and ceremonial sculptures, Pruitt also explores imagery devoid of the figure with three large drawings. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a monumental 10-foot tall double portrait titled, “Garveyite Celestials.”

In the artist’s words: “Flight Risk takes as its departure rumination on escape, specifically melding themes common to my work: back-to-Africa ideologies and mothership-escape mythologies. My work implies a cosmology in which technology intersects with Human, Nature and Spirit – all this centered on the Black psychological liberation.”

Two of the smaller drawings reference a continuing theme for the artist: super heroes and the comic book medium. “Captain America” is a powerful female figure clad in a spandex uniform incorporating a pattern synonymous with the bandanas worn by Blood gang members. “Your Altitude Determines Your Attitude” depicts another female hero dressed in seemingly ordinary clothes strapped into a futuristic jet pack as she’s about to soar into the stratosphere.

Two mid-sized portraits came together simultaneously. “I Need a Vacation From this Vacation” is a male portrait of a pensive astronaut in a space helmet surrounded by a celestial expanse. The subject wears what appears to be a tropical patterned shirt, a nod to a scene from an Aaron Douglas painting titled, “Into Bondage.” The partner portrait piece, “Woman with Halo,” includes a Kongo religious sculpture nestled in the subject’s ample hair. A glowing red orb on the statue’s mid-section references the red circular face of Hal 9000, the A.I. computer from2001, A Space Odyssey.

The final works in the show are epic in scale with bold painterly backgrounds of rich color. “Archangel” is a hovering memorial totem of offerings, suspended by an ominous drone. The piece pays homage to Eric Garner, who died from an act of police brutality in 2014. Symbols throughout the piece including the inscribed T-shirt worn by protesters reading, “I Can’t Breathe.” The other two pieces depict a majestic life-sized tiger and a drawing of a Mende Ritual costume, both referencing titles and text from prominent Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings.

Pruitt elaborates on the four drawings: “These are the pieces I had in mind when beginning the residency. I’ve always been committed to drawing the human figure, but I started thinking about what it really was that I was trying to get at. I'm still trying to think through this question but what I have come up with so far is that I am trying to link these bodies, these black bodies to a humanity that I find our real bodies to be disconnected from. That there is an interior life present in us and that we should, ourselves, claim it and respect it. I felt like maybe I needed to look at trying to illustrate that interior world without the human figures. That is what these four larger works are for me, an attempt at describing some version of a dynamic interior world. I am looking at a larger networked mythology of Man, Machine, Animal and Spirit as a way to depict this world.”