Gavin Brown's Enterprise transformed

On Saturday night, Gavin Brown’s West Village Enterprise played host to the launch of Rob Pruitt’s first collective monograph, Pop Touched Me. A Barbour-clad Pruitt sat perched behind a table, taking up to five minutes to personalize each patron’s book (while an annoyed Brown shouted at him to “hurry it along”). A pack of gum was an essential prop, as he chewed a new piece for each book, spitting it into the title page and, folding it over so as not to stick, inscribed, “My DNA” above.

“Thomas,

Thanks for the support, I want to fuck you.

-Rob,” read one personalized inscription.

In between signings, Pruitt rationalized the copious testimonials lining the pages of his book: “I knew that I didn’t want to have an essay by some big, fancy art writer saying, ‘Oh, this work is just so fabulous, it’s been overlooked for the past twenty years.’ Something that I’d essentially have to pay for that would flop up my position in the art world so, instead, I asked two hundred or so associates—people I have done projects with over the years—to write something heartfelt about me. Some of the things are nice and some aren’t so nice, but I think that it’s a really clear message about what it is that I do.” Marc Jacobs, Jeff Koons, and John Waters are just a handful of those you can expect to find hiding in the pages, renouncing and praising the artist’s artist.

Jeffrey Deitch, who leaves for the west coast June 1^st to clean house at MOCA, was one such friend and collaborator on hand to pay homage to Pruitt’s career. “Rob has been an inspiration for me for years. I’ve known him since the beginning. I knew him when he was a gallery assistant at Sonnabend because I was always there with Jeff Koons and Rob was always coming out of the back room. I’ve followed him from the very beginning as he followed his vision as an artist and I was there for all the ups and the downs, too.”