Hammer Projects: Mike Cloud

Mike Cloud is a Chicago-based artist who explores contemporary social and political issues through the visual language of abstraction. With an emphasis on painting, he makes mixed-media assemblages that are typically composed of stretcher bars configured into geometric shapes and universal forms with objects embedded in thick oil paint. For his Hammer Project, which will scale the facade of the lobby wall, Cloud will present three large, "loosely abstracted portraits," including two forthcoming commissioned works, collaged from paper grocery bags, magazine advertisements, cash, and other printed materials. Alongside the portraits, Cloud will exhibit works from Painted Clothing (2007–8), a series of collages fashioned from children's clothing, which comments on the relationship between consumer culture and childhood through visual signifiers such as dragons, fairies, and rainbows. Both series speak to the artist's in-depth experimentation with printmaking, sculpture, and painting across his career. This Hammer Project marks the artist's first solo museum presentation on the West Coast.