Painting for Teenage Boys: Black Noose

Twenty-four slipknots on a black background, hanging on a wall, overlook piles of beer cans, some new, others empty, with personalised stickers surrounding small coloured characters with childish features, lying cross-legged on the floor, as if drunk.

The Painting for Teenage Boys: Black Noose installation belongs to a series by artists Rob Pruitt and Jack Early based on the visual and cultural imagination of American youth. Distinguished depending on the medium between Painting for Teenage Boys and Sculpture for Teenage Boy, the series depicts, with dark humour, the dreams of a generation raised on the same mercantile references.

Like its counterpart Sculpture for Teenage Boys: Black Harleys, Painting for Teenage Boys: Black Noose is part of the Pinault Collection and was presented for the first time at the major group exhibition "Mapping the studio" held in 2009 at the Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi in Venice.