HONG KONG PANDA

Massimo De Carlo is pleased to present Hong Kong Panda: the first solo exhibition in Hong Kong by the American artist Rob Pruitt.

Rob Pruitt began making paintings of panda bears 17 years ago.  Half black and half white, the panda bear is a symbol of harmony and equality, like a living and breathing Yin Yang symbol. However, the panda bear is also a tragic symbol.  With the encroachment of industry on it’s natural habitat, the species has been reduced to near extinction.  Like a modern day Christ, the panda bear is dying out for our sins of greed and excess.

Ironically, the campaign to save the panda bear has spawned a new infatuation with the creature, resulting in a growing wave of panda products and a rapacious consumer demand for them. Pandas may be an endangered species, but in our contemporary global culture, they are flourishing.

In Pruitt’s new paintings, panda bears have been extracted from their natural habitats and inserted into metaphysical spaces of spectral, gradient color. Alluring and foreboding, the paintings evoke the worlds in which we are most likely to encounter the majestic panda bear today – the sleek, plastic surfaces of product design and the technological glow of computer touch screens.

ROB PRUITT

Rob Pruitt was born in Washington, DC, and studied at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, DC, and Parsons School of Design in New York. His work has been included in numerous museum exhibitions, including an encompassing exhibition at the Brant Foundation in Greenwich, CT (2015), a 2013 mid-career retrospective at the Aspen Art Museum, a solo exhibition at Dallas Contemporary (2011), Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2015), Freiburg Kunstverein (2012); Le Consortium, Dijon (2002); and group shows such as “Empire State” at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2012), “Pop Life” at Tate Modern (2009), and “Mapping the Studio” at Punta Della Dogana/Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2009). In 2009, he debuted the “Rob Pruitt’s Art Awards,” at the Guggenheim Museum, an award show for the art world fashioned after the Oscars. In 2011, he was commissioned by the Public Art Fund to install “The Andy Monument,” a highly polished chrome sculpture of Andy Warhol (replete with shopping bags) in New York’s Union Square near the site of Warhol’s Factory.

Hard Facts:

Massimo De Carlo, Hong Kong

3d Floor Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong

From Sept 8^th  until October 31^st , 2016

Open Monday to Saturday, 10:30am – 7.00pm

Opening:  Thursday Sept 8^th, 2016

For further information and materials:

Press Office, Massimo De Carlo

+39 02 70003987 – T. +44 (0) 2072872005

[email protected]

[email protected]

www.massimodecarlo.com