It's funny how a work changes when the world changes around it.
Rob Pruitt's The Obama Paintings had felt a little sentimental to me a couple of years ago, but now, well.
The resonance with On Kawara's Today Series interests me, in the way that like Kawara's painting practice, had a meditative ritualism. But Kawara's was inflected with Buddhism, while Pruitt's is very secular, mediated, informational. I find Kawara's paintings mark the passage of time, or rather, his passage of time, but Pruitts' accumulate into a history that is not (only) his own.
Rob Pruitt The Obama Paintings closed yesterday at Gavin Brown [gavinbrown.biz, image above too]
The Obama Paintings: using art to examine a presidential legacy [guardian]
