Hugo McCloud

Reality is Getting to the Good Part  2014

Aluminum foil, aluminum coating and oil paint on tar paper

79 x 78 in.

Hugo McCloud was born in Palo Alto, California and now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Tuskegee University in Alabama and graduated in 2002. He is a self-taught artist and his works are mostly created using ordinary production tools and materials. His design and construction background and urban, architectural influences have accumulated to create a distinct and unique creative process and vocabulary.

McCloud’s exhibition history includes a solo show at the Luce Gallery in Turin Italy in 2014. He has also participated in group shows internationally including: Pattern Recognition at MoCADA in Brooklyn New York in 2013, at the Namdi Contemporary Gallery for Art Basel Miami, Ryan Keeley and Hugo McCloud: From the mind of Mateo Mize at Art Now NY and Beautiful Refuse: Materiality at the Meulensteen Gallery, New York in 2012. 

McCloud’s work questions the dimensional and psychological boundaries of aesthetic beauty by manipulating and adapting objects previously disregarded or considered unappealing to the eye. Transmuting untraditional materials, such as copper sheets, tar paper and other base materials, his work exemplifies the process of transformation and evolution. The artist explains his oeuvre as a representation of the symbiotic relationship between source material and viewer: turning the ordinary into art. By celebrating the creative process in its entirety rather than merely its result, he gives importance to elements otherwise discarded. In the recovery of the undeveloped, he stimulates new-fangled potential and creates a visually arresting masterpiece that both captures the attention of the viewer and questions classical perception and reaction.