World Map continues this investigation. Originally an IKEA product designed for mass-consumption, the company’s Pjätteryd picture series are inkjet prints of a variety of subjects, stretched onto canvas to resemble fine art. But these products are in fact not art, but rather commercial goods churned out by a factory, designed for mass-appeal, consumerism, and profit. In order to subvert their functionality, Pruitt appropriates IKEA’s inkjet prints and transmutes them into art objects by painting over their surfaces with thick, impasto-laden oil paint. Through Pruitt’s alchemy, World Map loses its factory-like hollowness and becomes a playful, craft-like work whose thick surface resembles the hand-stitching textiles of Alighiero Boetti’s Mappa series or the sumptuous, tactile, and delicious cakes and pies of Wayne Thiebaud.

Simultaneously, Pruitt’s World Map also exists in dialogue with much of post-war art history. By using pre-defined subject matter in a fine art context, Pruitt’s paint-by-numbers strategy sardonically recalls the flags and targets of Jasper Johns and the rigorous orderliness of Frank Stella’s canvases. Perhaps Pruitt’s most significant influence, however, is Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain from 1917. By appropriating a readymade object with a (very) non-art function, Duchamp converted the urinal into a work of fine art by painting “R. Mutt” onto the surface and displaying it in a gallery setting, permanently changing the work’s context and calling into question the very nature of art itself. Pruitt extends this strategy to simulated art. By layering his own craftsmanship on top of a machined surface, Pruitt questions whether the artist’s power can also convert non-art into high art. World Map unquestionably succeeds.