Sean Kelly is delighted to announce Veiled, a one-person exhibition of new work by Brooklyn-based artist Hugo McCloud. This will be McCloud’s second exhibition with the gallery. An opening reception will take place on Friday, December 9 from 6-8 pm, and the artist will be present.

In Veiled, McCloud will occupy each of the gallery’s three exhibition spaces with a stunning presentation of over twenty new, large-scale abstract works from four different series. Drawing inspiration from a recently completed two-month artist residency at Bellas Artes Projects in the Philippines, these new works further McCloud’s visceral reclamation of painting with unconventional industrial materials combined with traditional oil pigment and woodblock printing techniques.

The exhibition’s title, Veiled, is taken from McCloud’s most recent series, in which he has obscured the vibrant, detailed surfaces of his paintings with sheets of aluminum foil. The opaque, mirror-like quality that dominates the resulting composition provokes an instinctive search for self-reflection, yet prohibits a true impression of the viewer. The work begs one to consider what is hidden and what is revealed, both within the work and within ourselves. 

Expanding McCloud’s investigation into the limits of utilitarian materials and interest in confronting aesthetic perceptions, the exhibition will feature a new suite of the artists’ hand-stamped paintings in a gold and white palette. The works, on tarpaper, have been torched, hammered and branded with hand-carved wooden blocks made during McCloud’s residency in the Philippines. The exhibition will also present a series of exquisite new works McCloud created from exceptionally humble and commonplace materials––industrially manufactured polyethylene sacks he collected from waste pickers in the Philippines. By deconstructing and reimagining an object globally associated with refuse and waste, McCloud has engendered extraordinary works that exist somewhere between painting, assemblage, and sculpture. 

On the occasion of this exhibition, Sean Kelly and Hatje Cantz Verlag will publish the first major monograph of the artist’s work. Featuring an essay by Isolde Brielmaier, this 96-page full-color catalog will be available for purchase at the gallery in late January 2017.

Born in in Palo Alto, California in 1980, Hugo McCloud currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work is included in the permanent collection of several international institutions, including the North Carolina Museum for Art, Raleigh, North Carolina; the Zabludowicz Collection, London, England; and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC. His work has been exhibited globally, including at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The Arts Club, London; Fondazione 107, Turin, Italy; the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy; and at the MoCADA Museum, Brooklyn, NY.