Luce Gallery is pleased to present Woven Memories, the much anticipated second solo exhibition with Brooklyn-based artist Ryan Cosbert. Including canvases hand-woven with mixed fabrics and knit pieces into her signature ‘tiles’, the exhibition will be on view beginning September 21st through November 5th. Cosbert’s distinctive tactile abstraction serves as a conduit to convey conceptual ideas deeply rooted in Black culture. In this series, the artist takes a scientific approach to explore the legacy of intergenerational trauma stemming from slavery, segregation, and urban violence. When viewed together, the paintings in Woven Memories channel protective ‘guardians’ from traditional African sculpture, seeking to trace the origins of inherited pain while also posing critical questions around the burden of past traumas on contemporary Black individuals.
Cosbert's thought-provoking exhibition title, Woven Memories, serves as a profound reflection of her extensive exploration into the realm of epigenetics. Epigenetics delves into the study of how an individual's behaviors and environment can trigger changes that impact the functioning of their genes. This research investigates how war, famine, sexual abuse, and systemic traumas such as racism possess the potential to send ripple effects through generations. These traumas may then lead to offspring inheriting altered brain chemistry, often resulting in compromised mental health and inflammation — a fundamental contributor to various diseases. With a remarkable body of work informed by thorough investigations into both historical and modern-day events within the African Diaspora, Cosbert brings to light and vividly portrays the origins of these previously concealed afflictions. In each artwork, the artist masterfully reveals how these invisible forces are intricately interwoven at the deepest cellular level, most notably through the incorporation of found objects. Broken watch faces and gears symbolize the inexorable passage of time, and bullet casings recall the violence, while infant diapers and pacifiers poignantly remind us of the inheritance passed down to the next generation.
In her captivating tondo painting The Void (2023), Cosbert skillfully paints a luminous backdrop, luring viewers into its embrace with a palette of blush fluorescent pinks and pale minty greens. Upon closer examination, the surface of the painting reveals an intricate landscape composed of mounds of square 'tiles.' These tiles are expertly crafted from recycled materials, including pulverized plastics, crushed dried flowers, and seashells, forming a grid-like structure with textures reminiscent of coral beds. Further energizing the composition are the prominent splatter marks of paint across the surface, a homage to the abstract expressionist action-painting style. However, it is the central motif that truly captivates the observer's attention — a spiral of fallen dominos that gracefully collapses toward the heart of the painting, echoing the circular shape of the tondo. This inclusion of dominos carries profound symbolism, serving a dual purpose. First, it harks back to their historical significance as objects of leisure deeply intertwined with African American culture, dating back to the era of the American Civil War. Second, it embodies the concept of the figurative "domino effect."
For Cosbert, this spiraling motion symbolizes the transfer of trauma, a force that affects individuals at various stages of life, relentless and inevitable. The dominos represent an unstoppable and interconnected chain reaction, much like the unfolding consequences of generational trauma. In this painting, the artist compels us to confront the unyielding nature of this force, urging us to acknowledge and grapple with the enduring legacy of trauma that shapes our lives.
Nevertheless, amidst even somber reflections, there is always a ray of hope. Just as epigenetic changes do not irreversibly alter one's DNA sequence, Cosbert artfully reminds the viewer that familial traumas need not permanently shape their life trajectory. Her artistic objective lies in imparting knowledge and nurturing the healing process for the profound ancestral wounds that persist. Through her work, she seeks to empower individuals with the strength to confront and transcend the burdens of the past, ultimately fostering a brightly-hued path towards healing and transformation.
Ryan Cosbert (1999, New York, United States) is a Brooklyn-based conceptual artist working in abstraction. Her work draws from her Haitian and Guyanese heritage, humanistic experiences, self-expression, political issues, and rigorously researched historical narratives of the African diaspora. Through her artistic practice, she skillfully explores the repercussions of subjugation and oppression experienced by the Black community, often shedding light on overlooked Black historical figures, shared experiences, and profound beliefs. Cosbert graduated with a BFA in 2021 from the prestigious School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City where she distinguished herself, receiving multiple honors including the Barnes Foundation Scholarship (2021) and the Chairman’s Merit Award (2017-21). Cosbert has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, including a number of art fairs, Felix Art Fair in Los Angeles, CA; both NADA and Untitled Art in Miami, FL; Dallas Art Fair in Dallas, TX and 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London, UK and New York, NY. Additionally, her work has been acquired by numerous private collections and public institutions.
New York, NY – May 2023
“Leisure is neither an escape from the world nor a refuge from it. It is a way of engaging with the world on our own terms, of taking time to explore our desires and our dreams, of cultivating the capacity for joy, for wonder, for delight, for laughter, for pleasure, for love.”
– Fred Moten
Luce Gallery proudly presents Won’t You Celebrate with Me, the New York City solo exhibition debut by Afro-Brazilian visual artist Zéh Palito curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah. Opened on May 19, the exhibition, born as a special project, will be on view through Saturday, June 10 at Luce Gallery in New York City residence, 365 Broadway.
The exhibition is a clarion call by Palito, inspired by the legendary Baltimore poet Lucille Clifton’s poem of the same name. A response to the rhythm and urgency of Clifton’s poem, Palito’s exhibition of works captures the essence of Black life in respite, at ease, and at peace through vivid dreamscapes. Won’t You Celebrate with Me invites us to reflect on the resilience of Black people across the diaspora.
Palito honed his visual lexicon in the streets of Sao Paulo as a muralist creating larger-than-life artworks in his signature pinks and yellows. Utilizing public space as his studio and the walls of buildings around Sao Paulo as his canvas, Palito developed an adroit facility to situate his subject in scenes that articulate Black joy and subvert the oppressive visual language that does seek to uplift Black people. A visual language amplified by traditional and social media that has plagued Black people for centuries depicting them as lazy, unsophisticated, violent, and inhuman. Palito has cultivated a practice that centers Black voices and ruptures traditional stereotypes associated with their bodies, particularly in leisure spaces. By tapping into the Black collective consciousness, Palito shares his view on the Black reality in its fullness - loving, complex, happy, and in community with each other.
Palito’s art seduces you into his universe and invites you to celebrate the multidimensionality of the global Black experience. His work celebrates the beauty of Black bodies at rest, as illustrated in I Swam Against Their Waves, lounging on a beach articulated in No Jim Crow Laws on Sag Harbor, or simply enjoying the company of loved ones, as seen in the piece From Baltimore with Love. Black bodies at play, expressing self or romantic love, and visualized in a state of repose are some poses that anchor the crux of Palito’s practice. A painting like Love x Love is a quintessential example as it highlights a couple enveloped in each other's arms, gaze directed at the viewer evoking an unbreakable bond between two soulmates. By showcasing these moments, Palito challenges stereotypes and invites viewers to rethink their perceptions of Black life and celebrates the importance of taking time to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, reminding us that leisure is not a luxury but a vital aspect of our well-being.
“Leisure is not a luxury, but a necessity. It is the time we need to recharge our spirits, to reconnect with our communities, and to reaffirm our commitment to justice and liberation.”
- Fred Moten
Within his dynamic artistic practice, we recognize inspiration from various sources including The Impressionists, Post-Impressionist, the West African Portrait Studio, Hip Hop, and Brazilian culture. Palito utilizes his artistic practice as a forum for telling stories about his culture, heritage, and identity. Through his paintings on canvas, he celebrates Black people with bold colors, loose brushwork, and dynamic imagery that often deconstruct symbols to recreate fecund pictorial planes proliferated by the presence of Black bodies from the diaspora uplifted. This is often depicted in Palito’s work by still life-like tropical fruits, subjects draped in clothing with luxury brand logos, and other signifiers of upward mobility. With each brushstroke, Palito creates visually arresting paintings that operate at the intersection of race, history, identity, leisure, and culture, developing a practice that is expressive and nonlinear in structure. His capacity to make fraught conditions beautiful is the key ingredient that makes Palito’s practice so singular. His art challenges the tropes and negative representations of Black culture, presenting a refreshing and authentic portrayal of the diverse experiences within the Black community.
The exhibition is accompanied by a playlist of music curated by Zéh Palito, which inspired the creation of works on show, in addition to a publication of essays by Ademar Britto, Teri Henderson, Larry Ossei-Mensah, Chantel Akworkor Thompson, as well as a Q&A between Derrick Adams, Zéh Palito and Larry Ossei-Mensah.
About Zéh Palito
Zéh Palito is a storyteller and cultural observer who provides insight into contemporary African diasporic life. Adorned with gold and other jewels, shells, exotic fruits, and flowers, the figures in his paintings become the centre of attention and the protagonists of their own stories. Each figure is positioned in a stance of power that illustrates a positive self-identity and pays homage to a rich cultural heritage. Combined with the use of bright colors, each figure demonstrates confidence, satisfaction, and self-assurance through their mere existence.
Zéh Palito's practice seeks to promote a relationship of mutual respect and pleasure between humans and the natural world, often drawing inspiration from Brazilian, African, and American cultures. The artist works across very different scales, from ambitious site-specific murals to small-scale figurative works on canvas. In parallel with his commitment to the environment, elevating, inspiring, and celebrating marginalized communities and underrepresented voices is a fundamental element of his practice - an implicit suggestion that the two issues go hand in hand.
Tropical fruits, animals, cars, and swimming pools, move through a world of vibrant foliage, flowers, and houseplants. Zéh Palito, choosing to represent minority groups, focuses on individuals with a greater intimacy of perspective. He depicts his figures in sync with their surroundings. Through dramatic shifts in scale and highly saturated use of colors, the artist proposes a wonderous utopic vision for the future.
Zéh Palito has made art murals in over 30 countries between Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. He has been the subject of numerous group exhibitions, including “When We See Us” at Museum Zeitz MOCAA in South Africa, “Quilombo: vida, problemas e aspirações do negro” at Museum Inhotim in Brazil, “Regarde-Moi” at Perrotin, Paris and “Winner Takes All” at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York. Among his solo exhibitions some highlights are, “Eu sei porque o pássaro canta na gaiola” - Galeria Simões de Assis, Brazil, “Untouchable Negritude” - Luce Gallery, Italy and “Tropical Diaspora” at Eubie Blake Cultural Center, Baltimore, USA.
About Larry Ossei-Mensah
Larry Ossei-Mensah uses art as a forum to redefine how we see ourselves and the world around us. The Ghanaian-American curator has launched numerous exhibitions and programs featuring artists such as Firelei Baez, Steve McQueen, Catherine Opie, Nick Cave, Guadalupe Maravilla, Ebony G. Patterson, Judy Chicago, Stanley Whitney, and many more. As a global collaborator, Ossei-Mensah has worked with renowned venues around the world such as; the MCA Denver, Ben Brown Fine Arts in Hong Kong & London, the 7th Athen Biennale in Athens, Greece, (co-curated with OSMK Social Club), and MASS MoCA (co-curated with Susan Cross and Allison Janae Hamilton in 2018-2019). He’s been a partner on several Web3-related projects with creatives such as Derrick Adams x Jay-Z, Marco Brambilla, and Mikael Owunna.
Following his critically acclaimed exhibition in Spring 2022, Ghost of Empires, at Ben Brown Fine Art in Hong Kong, Ossei-Mensah recently opened his second exhibition in Asia, Sounds of Blackness, at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila in the Philippines. This is the first group exhibition featuring an ensemble of all Black visual artists from the African Diaspora in South East Asia. The exhibition explores how the participating artists utilize their practices as a forum to articulate a diversity of ideas and perspectives through various mediums and is on view until June 17th featuring Artists such as; Rashid Johnson, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Vaughn Spann, Tschabalala Self, and Hank Willis Thomas. Ossei-Mensah has also worked alongside Ghanaian painter, Amoako Boafo, curating his first museum solo exhibition, Soul of Black Folks, exhibited at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in 2021, San Francisco, and the Contemporary Art Museum Houston in 2022 with upcoming iterations on view summer & fall ‘23 at the Seattle Art Museum and Denver Art Museum.
A native of The Bronx, Ossei-Mensah co-founded ARTNOIR, a nonprofit whose mission is to drive racial equity in the art world by centering creatives, curators, collectors, and communities of color. Through ARTNOIR, he has worked with brands like UBS, Twitter, Coca-Cola, 1stDibs, and Mailchimp on projects that were the intersection of art and culture. Ossei-Mensah has been profiled in publications, including the New York Times, Artsy, WWD, Frieze, Dazed, Robb Report, The Financial Times, and Cultured Magazine. He has participated in numerous panels and conversations alongside Art Basel Miami Beach, The Earn Your Leisure Podcast, and The Fog Art Fair. Formerly the Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCAD), Detroit, Ossei-Mensah currently serves as Curator-at-Large at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).
We are pleased to announce Traces of Me, the first solo exhibition for Collins Obijiaku with Luce Gallery. A series of new portrait paintings - all with his signature meandering charcoal line-work - will be on view beginning May 4 through July 21, 2023.
Obijiaku is a Nigerian-based painter who uses the tradition of portraiture to examine the depths, truths, and complexities of humanity. In each work, the artist paints quiet, composed figures, with expressive gazes, to directly engage the viewer. To further strengthen the allure and intimacy, Obijiaku draws a winding line—with no detectable beginning or end—that weaves throughout the sitter’s face and skin reminiscent of ‘mapping’ each person’s life journey. Together, the paintings in Traces of Me encourage viewers to contemplate the individuality of each person, as well as their distinct contribution to the diversity and complexity of the human experience.
This exhibition brings together a collection of portraits of people the artist has known since childhood. As the title Traces of Me hints, the paintings conceal a small element of the artist’s connection between him and each kindred spirit on view, a sentiment Obijiaku felt after working on the series. In every elegant composition, he observes an old friend, memorializing their likeness, and thoughtfully records their inner conviction of strength, hope, positivity, and intelligence. Although usually indifferent to incorporating symbolism into his work, his use of ochre yellow, in many of the paintings, references the artist’s nostalgic connection to the hue from childhood. He recalled that all the brightest students were selected for the yellow group — a color he still associates with intelligence to this day. While aesthetically pleasing, the true strength of Obijiaku’s work is how he marries observations of each sitter’s distinct mannerisms and expressions, with his meditative charcoal line work, to gently guide the viewer to see more deeply and encourage profound empathy.
In Portrait of Gladys (woman in blue dress) we see an elegant, young Nigerian woman donning a periwinkle blue dress. In a pale yellow room, she sits with her arms pressing downward, shifting her weight slightly left while leaning ever-so-slightly forward toward us, meeting our gaze directly. There’s a brief pause in her expression — her eyes slightly squinting— as if she’s examining us, rather than the other way around.
Her demeanor is calm and poised, while simultaneously exuding an inner confidence. For Obijiaku this confidence is particularly important to emphasize with his female sitters, as he seeks to change common misconceptions of women, and instead emphasize their power. Meandering throughout her face, across her chest, and cascading down each arm, Obijiaku’s signature charcoal lines create visual pathways for the viewer to explore. Working much like fingerprints or wrinkles, the lines identify her, as well as all the twists and turns of life. She knows who she is, where she’s been, and where she aspires to be.
Collins Obijiaku (b.1995) is a Nigerian-based visual artist working in portraiture. A self-taught painting and drawing artist, Obijiaku creates alluring portraits of individuals from his home country. In each work captivating gazes and skin permeated with charcoal line work resembling topographic maps, foster a deeper understanding of both the individual, and ultimately humanity as a whole. In 2019, Obijiaku was an artist-in-residence at Black Rock Senegal, the multidisciplinary residency program founded by artist Kehinde Wiley in Dakar, Senegal. Obijiaku’s works have been also exhibited at the Museum of African Diaspora in San Francisco and the National Gallery of Arts in Enugu in Nigeria. His international exhibitions throughout Africa, Europe, and the United States include a solo show with Roberts Projects in Los Angeles, California. Additionally, his work has been acquired by numerous private collections and public institutions, including the Dallas Museum of Art in Dallas, Texas.
Luce Gallery is pleased to announce The Dance, a group show featuring Kika Carvalho, Danielle De Jesus, Yaya Yajie Liang, Emmanuel Massillon, Pedro Neves, Thomias Radin, Austin Uzor, and Sydney Vernon, in Turin from March 16 to April 28, 2023.
Bringing together fifteen artworks, including painting, drawing, and sculpture, The Dance embodies the rhythmic movements - both literal and metaphorical - of dancing styles. Deeply embedded in our cultural histories, the expressiveness of movement relates to celebration, ritual, or simply a distinct pattern or tempo. Each artwork on view addresses the various art historical connections, abstract qualities, or symbolic references to dance in the visual arts. The exhibition seeks to explore the myriad ways in which contemporary artists can interpret, layer, or reconsider this classic subject matter. The dynamism of movement, elegance of patterns, graceful steps, and rhythms of ancestral rituals have provided inspiration to artists for centuries.
In Danielle De Jesus’s Bomba Combativo (2023), a graceful young woman twists her torso, swinging her full scarlet petticoat using Bomba movements. This traditional Puerto Rican dance can trace its roots back to enslaved peoples from Africa and indigenous Taínos tribes. As this type of dance is still performed today, it creates a deeply rooted connection to Puerto Rico’s ancestors and becomes a source of pride and defiance against the colonists who tried to erase their traditions.
Sydney Vernon's Musical Chairs (2023) and Kika Carvalho's Summer Birds They Sing Their Song I and II (2023) also question the dialogue between body and sound and dynamism in space and time. The first, a graphite drawing on paper, focuses on the freedom of movement of a group of people who enjoy playing musical chairs in a scene of leisure outdoors. The two paintings portray the same young black woman, just awake, in a fluid and unpredictable sequence of dance following the birdsong.
The influence of dance is not however limited to the human figure and may often refer to rhythmic or lyrical movements. In Pedro Neves’s diptych, Movement 1 and 2, we see streams and waves of thin lines cascading downward against blue backgrounds meant to represent rainfall. In Movement 1, these lines tap the rooftop, as we imagine them “dancing” across the surface, drumming to nature’s beat.
Nocturnal atmospheres, in which the breath of the wind waves the sea surface in Thomias Radin’s Danse Nocturne (2023) and sways the curtain on the window in Austin Uzor’s Drifting Hibiscus (2023), evoke the floating dimension of dreams.
Dance can also be symbolically representative. A common idiom called “the dance” refers to when we engage in a negotiation of conflicting priorities where balance, skill, and meticulousness are crucial to success. In this sense, many of the works included in this exhibition could reference any number of contemporary conflicts from our everyday relationships to race relations.
In Emmanuel Massillon’s Dog Food (Water Hoses and Fire Trucks) (2022), we see two large ferocious dogs leaping to opposite sides of the canvas ready to attack against an abstracted background of blue, gray, yellow, and red. This scene brings to mind the painful history of civil rights protesters in the 1960s, when police used dogs to attack those who demonstrated peacefully. Here the negotiation between two groups is complex, aggressive, and unfair, leaving viewers to question - how do we even begin to engage with such impossible conflicts?
We can find other affinities between dance and art in the reiterated physical movement of the hand that determines the pictorial gesture, as expressed by Yaya Yajie Liang's Echoing in Time (2023). Masses of color expand on her canvas like sound waves, suggesting rhythmic melodies.
When contemplated as a whole, the artworks in this exhibition express what it means to see, feel, and experience “dance” in contemporary visual art today.
Kika Carvalho (1992, Vitória, Brazil) is a Rio de Janeiro-based visual artist working primarily in painting. Carvalho’s artistic practice and research center around the color blue which recalls both her relationship to her homeland and the history of painting.
Danielle De Jesus (1987, New York, United States) is a Queens-based Nuyorican painter and photographer. Her work is informed by personal experiences with gentrification and displacement in her hometown of Bushwick and encourages rumination about the negative effects of capitalism and colonialism present in urban America.
Yaya Yajie Liang (1995, Henan, China) is a London-based painter. Often pulling inspiration from other artistic sources such as literature and cinema, her works are studies on momentary sensation, perception, storytelling, and materials.
Emmanuel Massillon (1998, Washington D.C., United States) is a Washington D.C. and New York-based African-American conceptual artist. Working across several media, including painting, photography, sculpture, mixed media, and installation, Massillon explores the complexity of race, identity, and culture while fostering conversations about politically charged topics and realities of daily life.
Pedro Neves (1997, Imperatriz, Brazil) is a Belo Horizonte-based visual artist working in painting, sculpture, and photography. His work stems from the need to rethink the history of Brazil by increasing the representation of traditional cultures and daily family life, while simultaneously confronting issues of colonialism and imperialism that still plague the country.
Thomias Radin (1993, Les Abymes, Guadeloupe) is a Berlin-based painter. With a background as a curator and artistic director of dance, Radin’s artistic practice equates the movement and feel of dance with the process of painting, referring to it as an “intuitive freedom of expression”.
Austin Uzor (1991, Nigeria) is a New York-based painter and drawing artist. His work explores the “unknown” by examining psychological spaces, feelings, and alternate realities in search of existential truths, often focusing on the traumas related to displacement.
Sydney Vernon (1995, Prince George’s County, Maryland, United States) is a New York-based visual artist working across multiple types of media including painting, video, and performance. Her practice is heavily inspired by her family history, Black-American culture, and in-depth investigations of self.
Luce Gallery is pleased to present Parklife, a solo exhibition of new works by Swedish-born and Norwegian-based painter, Peter Mohall. Twelve paintings — all with his signature cast brushstrokes highlighting the painting’s palette — will be on view beginning January 26th through March 2nd 2023.
Mohall creates post-impressionistic style landscapes dotted with people enjoying moments of leisure and tranquility. Inspired by Swedish and Norwegian coastlines and countrysides, Mohall documents his observations while on holiday with friends and family. When translating these subjects into paintings, he embraces surfaces like jute which emphasizes texture, and rich palpable colors that simulate a luminosity from within. Uniquely, Mohall also invites the viewer into his artistic process by sharing each color from his palette painted on acrylic casts, and neatly stacked or arranged in the composition. The artworks on view in Parklife cleverly pair the beloved picturesque traditional landscape genre with a distillation of the painting to its most simplistic form, the colorful brushstroke. Here viewers are simultaneously encouraged to experience both the transportative nature of landscapes, and to contemplate the complexity of how each abstract element that composes the painting — the colors, lines, gestures, and forms — contribute to these emotional experiences.
The exhibition’s title, Parklife, is borrowed from the 1994 British rock band Blur’s title track song of the same name. Much like Mohall’s paintings, the songwriter explained his upbeat, spoken word song was “about the park class...having fun and doing exactly what you want to do.”
For this series, Mohall instills an en plein air feel to his paintings by referencing photos from past trips that he digitally collages. From there he later creates detailed-to-scale studies on paper of both the scene and a color index reference before beginning the final painting on jute or linen. Working with tempera grassa, the artist mixes pigment-rich paints that resemble saturated jewel tones in his paintings. After a color is used in the composition, he then paints one of his cast brushstrokes the same color and affixes it to the painting’s surface. For Mohall, the replicated artist’s brushstroke investigates the importance and authenticity of the artist’s hand or recorded gesture in the painting — does repetition change the meaning? The strength of Mohall’s work is its grounding in abstraction; there is always an emphasis on color theory, form, texture, and spatial relationships that enlivens his compositions.
In his large two-panel painting, I Nores Hage (2022), we are welcomed to a red cliffside home and surrounding property with sweeping vistas of the turquoise seaside below. Tall thin trees reach up toward the crystal blue sky filled with pale pink and lavender fluffy clouds. In between the trees five figures, perhaps family members, stand on the sun-kissed chartreuse and shady mossy lawn all gazing in different directions. Each seems to enjoyably take in another part of the epic view standing as upright, still, and almost meditative as the surrounding trees. On the left of the work, the artist has stacked all fifty-three hues used to create the painting, a reminder to the viewer of the complexity and diversity of colors used in the large work. Yet it is ultimately up to the viewer to decide if they choose to dwell in the landscape or contemplate how it was created. “Confidence” is after all “a preference for the habitual voyeur.”
Peter Mohall (b. 1979) is a Swedish-born, Norwegian-based artist working in painting. His work is an exploration of the history and medium of painting as a subject. Mohall graduated from the Oslo National Academy of Fine Arts. He has exhibited throughout Europe, Asia and the United States, including solo shows with Koki Arts (Tokyo), Pablo’s Birthday (NYC) and QB Gallery (Oslo). He has also participated in a number of art fairs including, Felix Art Fair in Los Angeles, CA; Untitled and Art Basel Miami in Miami, FL; and Dallas Art Fair, in Dallas, TX. Additionally, his work has been acquired by numerous private collections as well as public commissions in both Oslo and Drammen.
Through intense research in the workshop and the use of industrial materials like bitumen, aluminium sheet and oxidized steel plates, Hugo McCloud makes his works as if they were the framework of a modular construction. Assembling constituent forms that are extremely distant from the tradition of painting, in the classical sense, the research focuses on craftsmanship in creative intervention, and the sometimes arduous physical nature of the work, which engages the artist in the study of the material and its well-gauged grafting into the area of the work.
This approach lies in the experience of life and, first of all, in the voyages that are an important part of McCloud’s development, during which he has learned about different techniques originating in countries like India or South Africa, in an ongoing attempt to provide an unprecedented and timely reinterpretation of that semiotic vision time has been able to nurture in certain traditions extraneous to the Occident. It is in the combination of openness to the “other than self” and the filter of the American vantage point, through which the artist has always observed the world, that the work of McCloud arises, also drawing inspiration from the streets, in the midst of the urban refuse where he often finds abandoned metals or mattresses, from which he takes the images of his patterns sculpted in blocks of wood.
McCloud is self-taught, and concentrates on a kind of aesthetic refinement proudly detached from academic influences, specifically engaged with the cognitive potential of manipulation. The result is a compositional logic close to that of the “mosaic,” inserted in turn inside a vertical construction, the additive sum of each single part.
The artist, in his alchemical approach, alters the nature of materials, sublimating them in completed works. His practice questions the limits of the medium, joining components in a single imaginary that would otherwise have been demolished, or would have lived out the destiny shared by all things to become refuse. The work also incorporates the process of oxidation that corrodes, contaminates and transforms.
The resources for the work are found in bolts, panels, metal plates or gratings usually used in construction. All items used by McCloud to stimulate a materic fusion that shapes the object on the basis of the original idea, without ever overlooking their intrinsic properties; as in a voyage of human evolution that happens inside the limits of the cyclical rules of nature.
McCloud’s works often reflect the same theme in a pattern of repetitions, altered by a single imprint, done by means of manual pressure. The dynamism of the encounter of the different surface finishes betrays a timid reference to design, though in a more complex key, mingled with the fundamental principles of Arte Povera, viewed by the artist in a very particular way, far from any hypothesis of direct derivation.
While McCloud often expresses himself by composing monochromatic surfaces interrupted by certain distinctive tones, almost as if to establish a dialogue of perspective between multiple levels of reference, in other works he puts the accent on gesture, conveyed through the heat of the flame of the blow torch, which adds a new imprint to the material, altering its contours and shadings.
The artist intervenes in his creations in full awareness of the fact that he has only partial control over the final results, stemming from an incessant and never truly concluded dialectic between subject and object, observer and observed. To use the words of McCloud himself, from a recent interview: “Every time, I try to test the limits of manipulation of materials. And when I have found the answers to my questions, new questions arise...”
Contrarily to the classic painting where the artist add to the base pictorial substance to exalt the forms, in Muted Noise Hugo McCloud witness the wish to cover the colour adding proper elements like metallic foils, as to keep silent the source from which it is born the colour, but without darkening, rather exalting single parts that shine of proper light. Like is a eclipse, the light is covered allowing to glimpse the boarders of the same one, and single parts of colour assume even more vigor.
