Rob Pruitt’s Flea Market

 

Rob Pruitt’s Flea Market has held a distinctive place in the American artist’s practice for more than two decades. Pruitt uses the approachable format of a flea market to create a situation in which art, everyday objects, collecting, and social interaction coexist without an established hierarchy.

 

For the Warsaw edition of Rob Pruitt’s Flea Market, invited artists, collectives, institutions, and people connected with the local art scene will prepare their own stalls and activities. Visitors will be able to find clothing, books, records, posters, handmade objects, artworks, objects from artists’ studios and private collections. Some stalls will also take the form of performances, services, and other proposals prepared specifically for the day, including quick portraits and caricatures, fortune-telling, tarot readings, poems written to order, games, and baked goods.

 

As part of the Flea Market, Kwiaciarnia Grafiki will present another edition of SITOSALON, a live screen-printing event featuring designs created by Rob Pruitt, Kwiaciarnia Grafiki and other artists associated with MSN. The rules are simple: bring your own light-coloured fabric item (the ink will be black)—such as a T-shirt, sweatshirt, or pillowcase—and print on it together with the Kwiaciarnia Grafiki team. The designs will be no larger than A3 size. Screen-printing is a great way to revive to clothes that have been sitting forgotten in your wardrobe.

 

For the Warsaw edition of the Flea Market, Rob Pruitt has designed several images featuring pandas. The panda, an animal associated with gentleness and often used as a symbol in international diplomacy, has become something of an alter ego for the artist and has remained one of the most recognizable motifs in his painting practice for over thirty years.

 

The Museum will provide participants with basic infrastructure, but how the stalls are used will remain entirely in their hands. This DIY principle is one of the foundations of the project: instead of a finished exhibition, a situation emerges whose final form depends on the people taking part.

 

The Warsaw edition builds on earlier MSN initiatives aimed at activating the local artistic community, such as Wystawka, an art market organized in 2021 at the Museum’s former premises on Pańska Street. It also relates to Tadeusz Kantor’s idea of the “Popular Exhibition,” in which the boundaries between the artwork, the everyday object, work, and social life are suspended. In this sense, the Flea Market becomes a temporary space of exchange: of things, ideas, experiences, and relationships.

 

An important element of the Warsaw edition of Pruitt’s market is its social dimension. There will be no conventional sales during the flea market. Visitors will be able to choose from the proposals prepared by participants—from objects, artworks, handmade goods, and baked goods to activities, services, performances, and other creative offerings—and support the Ocalenie Foundation by making a donation to the Foundation’s online fundraising campaign. The event creatively develops the theme of last year’s Ocalenie Foundation auction, “Thinking of others, think of yourself,” a phrase taken from a poem by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. It is a call for solidarity and a reminder that our well-being and security are connected to the fate of others.

 

The fundraising campaign will be active throughout the event; it is the main goal of the Warsaw edition of the Flea Market. We want everyone to be able to participate in their own way: by attending the event, taking part in one of the activities or making a direct donation to the Foundation.

 

The Ocalenie Foundation has been supporting migrants and refugees in Poland for many years, providing, among other things, legal, psychological, and integration support. By combining the format of an artistic flea market with a fundraising campaign, the event becomes not only a creative and social occasion, but also a concrete act of solidarity.

 

The project was first presented in 1999 at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in New York. Pruitt invited other artists to occupy tables and present whatever they considered interesting: artworks, objects from their collections, things from their studios, or personal belongings. As he described the idea, the aim was to create an alternative to a traditional group exhibition: rather than a conventional display, each participant was given their own space and could give it a character of their own.

Since then, the Flea Market has been returning in different locations and contexts. In 2007, Pruitt took over the Gavin Brown’s Enterprise booth at Frieze Art Fair in London, inviting a group of artists to participate. In 2009, he organized Rob Pruitt’s Christmas Flea Market in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London. In subsequent years, Pruitt collaborated with museums and galleries across Europe and the United States on different iterations of the project.

In subsequent editions, Pruitt consistently adapted the format to specific places and their communities. The flea market thus becomes not so much an exhibition of artworks as an open situation in which different people, objects, and ways of participating in culture come together. The project combines Pruitt’s characteristic interest in consumption, collecting, and popular culture with his belief that art does not have to be esoteric, elite or reserved for experts.