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Painter Reveals 2,307 Obama Portraits (And Counting)

Rob Pruitt's six-year-long daily 'The Obama Paintings' project goes on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.
Installation detail from The Obama Paintings and The Lincoln Monument, Rob Pruitt, 2015. Courtesy of MOCAD, the artist, and Gavin Brown's enterprise.

Every single day for the past six years, painter Rob Pruitt has taken 15 minutes to craft a tricolor portrait of President Obama on a different 2' x 2' panel. The expansive collection of works, which we previewed earlier this year, debuted this month at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), papering the walls and crowding the shelves for exhibition The Obama Paintings. The show opened with 2,307 pieces but expands daily as Pruitt continues his project, which will extend until the very last day of Obama's presidency. Also alongside the red, white, and blue portraiture premieres Pruitt's conceptual recreation, The Lincoln Monument, a stack of copper-painted tires filled with 200,000 pennies.

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"Rob Pruitt began The Obama Paintings as a means of tracking President Barack Obama’s presidency," reads MOCAD's description of the show. "Since Obama’s inauguration on January 20, 2009, Pruitt has created a 2’x2’ painting of the President every single day, with particular imagery drawn from the news of that day. Upon completion, The Obama Paintings will comprise 2,922 paintings, incorporating such seminal events as his first State of the Union address to seemingly mundane activities. Each canvas is given equal importance, regardless of the traditional metrics of newsworthiness of the moment it depicts."  Below, check out paintings from Rob Pruitt's pictorial chronicle of POTUS:

Installation detail from The Obama Paintings and The Lincoln Monument, Rob Pruitt, 2015. Courtesy of MOCAD, the artist, and Gavin Brown's enterprise.

Installation detail from The Obama Paintings and The Lincoln Monument, Rob Pruitt, 2015. Courtesy of MOCAD, the artist, and Gavin Brown's enterprise.

Installation detail from The Obama Paintings and The Lincoln Monument, Rob Pruitt, 2015. Courtesy of MOCAD, the artist, and Gavin Brown's enterprise.

Installation detail from The Obama Paintings and The Lincoln Monument, Rob Pruitt, 2015. Courtesy of MOCAD, the artist, and Gavin Brown's enterprise.

Installation detail from The Obama Paintings and The Lincoln Monument, Rob Pruitt, 2015. Courtesy of MOCAD, the artist, and Gavin Brown's enterprise.

The Obama Portraits will be on display at MOCAD through August 2, 2015. Read more about Rob Pruitt's prolific project on MOCAD's website.

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