by: Ellen C. Caldwell
for Riot Material
Robert Pruitt: Devotion is Houston-born and New York-based Robert Pruitt’s first major museum exhibit in Los Angeles, and it is a must-see and muse-experience.
California African American Museum (CAAM) features Devotion in a large interior room, with plenty of light and room for a show with large-scale charcoal works on paper, paintings, sculptures, and installations.
As the title suggests, the room feels religious in nature — in the way that people are quietly and respectfully moving from one work to another; in the way that people seem in awe of both the art, the artifice, and the artifacts surrounding them; and in the way that the work is speaking to people individually, poetically, and more largely in a community sense. Devotion is an experience that CAAM’s Visual Arts Curator Mar Hollingsworth has curated beautifully and masterfully…