Details:
① Artwork:
Adlai Stevenson
This artwork is part of Cloud’s ongoing series of portrait paintings that utilize text, symbols, and found objects to create abstract, collaged icons of specific individuals. In this series, Cloud incorporates a collaged piece of canvas in the shape of his hand, giving the artwork a bodily scale. This portrait depicts Adlai Stevenson II, a former Governor of Illinois and United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Stevenson was also a two-time Democratic nominee for president of the United States, losing both times to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Stevenson received his J.D. degree from Northwestern University, where Cloud currently teaches.
Mike Cloud’s work examines the condition of paintings within contemporary life among countless reproductions, symbols, and descriptions. He constructs his own irregular stretcher frames, stapling his expressive, colorful, and heavily painted and collaged canvases within wooden structures. Cloud’s paintings-cum-sculptures are filled with multiple layers of meaning while frequently incorporating textual references from his internet research. Ultimately, his expansive practice dissects photographic and painterly forms, scrambled text, and re-aligned content to produce new understandings.
Specs:
③ Artist:
Mike Cloud’s work examines the condition of paintings in their contemporary life among countless reproductions, symbols, and descriptions. He constructs his own stretcher frames from wooden battens, often broken, that he nails together into different shapes. He staples his expressive, colorful, and heavily painted canvases within these structures, often collaging in found objects or text fragments. Cloud’s paintings-cum-sculptures are filled with multiple layers of meaning while frequently incorporating textual references from his internet research. His practice encompasses the expanded field of painting and image-making by dissecting photographic and painterly forms, scrambling text, and re-aligning content to produce new understandings.
Mike Cloud was born in 1974 in Chicago, IL, where he lives. He earned his BFA from the University of Illinois-Chicago in Chicago, IL (2001) and his MFA from the Yale University School of Art in New Haven, CT (2003).
His work has been exhibited at P.S.1 in Queens, NY; the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Xavier Hufkens in Brussels, Belgium; Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum in the Slovak Republic; NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, FL; the Landing Gallery in Los Angeles, CA; Thomas Erben Gallery in New York City, NY; Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York City, NY; White Columns in New York City, NY; and elsewhere.
Cloud’s work has been reviewed by the New York Times, Art in America, The Washington Post, Artforum, and Art Review and featured in the book Painting Abstraction by Bob Nickas, published by Phaidon Press.
Cloud has been the recipient of the Rome Prize, the Richard Pousette-Dart Award, the inaugural Chiaro Award from Headlands Center for the Arts, an artist fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Barry Schactman Prize in Painting from the Yale University School of Art, and the Grace Holt Memorial Award in African American Issues from the University of Illinois, Chicago.
His work is in the collections of The Bronx Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, all in New York City, NY.
