R.B. Pruett: Paintings
January 1 – February 25, 2025
Thursday, February 6, 2025, 6:00-8:00: Reception
ATHICA @ Ciné Gallery
234 W Hancock Ave.
Athens, GA 30601
For hours, see: www.athenscine.com
ATHICA@Ciné Gallery presents an exhibition featuring the cannibalized paintings of R. B. Pruett. Through his technique of cutting up and repurposing paintings, Pruett uses layers of fragmentation, collage, and distortion to build new images that twist and turn with a cartoon Cubism in which eyeballs, noses, and profiles free associate on the surface. Visceral, painterly, and energetic, these works bear up under repeated scrutiny to reveal new intimations.
I enjoy the physicality of painting. My works allude to the beauty of decay, to violation, and vulnerability. They are excavations, a conglomeration of surfaces, and reconstructions that are layered with a variety of materials. From these materials figurative images are often unearthed.
My paintings have surfaces that attempt to reveal a sense of time and a certain kind of depth, a depth that is both physical and metaphorical through build up and layering as well as emotional depth through destructive scarring, removing and cannibalizing. My work is a response to the human condition, current socio-political issues, and my personal quest for self-identity.
Currently, I’m interested in painting the figure, and the struggles of being human. Race relations and stereotypes present in American culture, especially the south, interests me, and find their way into my work.
— R.B. Pruett
This is Pruett’s first solo exhibition for ATHICA. He was selected by the ATHICA Exhibitions Committee to be featured in the Solo Duo Trio series, which provides opportunities for individual artists to exhibit their work at ATHICA and its partner location, ATHICA@Ciné.
About the Artist
Working in the Southern United States and living between Athens and Atlanta, Georgia, R.B. Pruett was born December 28th, 1982. He is known as a contemporary artist, illustrator and art educator. R.B. utilizes unconventional approaches in his painting processes. He coined the phrase “cannibalism” to describe his painting process in his thesis, “Cannibalism; a Failure to be Satisfied” published in 2009. It describes a painting technique that he uses to receive instant gratification during this painting process. His artwork has been exhibited throughout the United States and is in private collections world wide. A twice participant in the Red Clay Survey, a survey of Southern Art sponsored by the Huntsville Museum of Art, R.B. Pruett was born in Athens, Georgia where he spent most of his life. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia with a BFA in Painting/Drawing and Art Education. He received his MFA from East Tennessee State University in 2009. Currently, he is teaching art in Monroe, Georgia, and lives there with his wife and three daughters.
Website: www.rbpruett.com
Title List: Image Sheet.docx
Press Release:
R.B. Pruett: Paintings is sponsored in part by The James E. and Betty J. Huffer Foundation, The Georgia Council for the Arts, and The National Endowment for the Arts.