Installation image credit: Dawn Blackman
VIP Preview: December 6 – 7, 2023
Public Days: December 8 – 10, 2023
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Vielmetter Los Angeles is excited to present “Shades of Hope,” an installation by Hugo McCloud, at Meridians at Art Basel Miami Beach in collaboration with Sean Kelly Gallery.
The installation is comprised of eight large-scale paintings of fruit cart umbrellas, installed across two parallel walls featuring McCloud’s own photo-documentation of Los Angeles street corners.
McCloud’s paintings are composed entirely of primary colors by layering and melting commercial single-use shopping bags. Observing the lifecycle of the bags throughout an economy of goods and labor, McCloud is inspired by how this ubiquitous material passes through the hands of individuals at every level of society. In these new works, the colorful umbrellas, ubiquitous in all neighborhoods throughout the city, double as representations of both labor and hope. In the artist’s own words: “Traveling through Los Angeles and learning my new city, my eyes are continuously greeted by the rainbow umbrella. I know the people working the stands move in a mind frame of need and hope. I too, move in hope. This last year of my life has been nothing short of a storm that has changed certain directions of my life. Making a decision to now make Los Angeles my base and accepting certain realities that come with that, I choose to focus my outlook from a positive direction. Investing both resources and time to create an infrastructure that will support my creative ideas, I am continually challenged with post stress from my past experience. The reality is that I am daily battling doubt, fear and uncertainty. Fear of things not working out or that things will be taken away again. Though I know these thoughts are not real, the mind is a strong component. The rainbow is a continual reminder to move in a direction of hope.”
Hugo McCloud (b. 1980, Palo Alto, CA) has had solo exhibitions at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, The Arts Club, London, and Fondazione 107 (Turin, Italy). He has also been featured in group exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, and The Drawing Center, New York. His work is in the collections of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of the Arts, The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the Brooklyn Museum, the Mott-Warsh Collection, and The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection. He is represented by Vielmetter Los Angeles, CA and Sean Kelly Gallery, NY.
