ROB PRUITT: HOLIDAY
MASSIMODECARLO is delighted to present Holiday, a solo exhibition by American artist Rob Pruitt.
December 12, 2024 - January 11, 2025
The exhibition unfolds like a meditation on life’s rhythms - both the grand cosmic cycles and the deeply personal ones. Spanning themes of time, memory, identity, and the peculiar poetry of everyday objects, the works are as introspective as they are universal.
In Holiday, a suite of 24 paintings marks the passage of a single day, capturing the subtle drama of light as it shifts throughout time. Drawing from photos taken on his iPhone and employing meticulous colour blending, Pruitt channels the sequential motion of British photographer Eadweard Muybridge, but replaces the iconic galloping horses with the quieter unfolding of a day. The result is both meditative and cinematic - a visual reel of shifting hues that encourages viewers to pause and reflect on how our days, the fundamental units of our existence, often slip into the background of our lives. As Pruitt describes it, these works are “containers,” open to whatever we choose to project onto them, transforming the ordinary into an ever-evolving canvas of meaning.
Alongside Pruitt’s Sunset Paintings, another series inspired by the phases of the moon takes a more leisurely approach to time. Here, hours are replaced by the unhurried passage of months. The paintings depict nocturnal skies framed by palm trees, inviting a contemplative exploration of time’s cyclical nature. These works oscillate between the grandiosity of the cosmos and the intimate calm of a tropical vacation. Much like the works featuring shades and sea horizons, they encourage us to peek through a window - not so much to observe the moon, but to experience those rare moments when its quiet presence briefly halts the usual rush of our daily lives.
In typical Pruitt fashion, Holiday balances awe with humour, intimacy with spectacle. It’s a celebration of life’s cycles - day to night, moonrise to moonset, childhood to midlife - and a reminder to look up, look around, and maybe even look in the mirror.