Mike Cloud is the 27th artist to be featured in "Chicago Works," a solo exhibition series at the Museum of Contemporary Art that features artists who are shaping contemporary art.
Carolina Garibay
"There are about seven paintings, and each of the paintings is variable in that they're hinged," Cloud said. "Any of them could either be on the wall, or they lean on the floor against the wall, or they can sit on the floor as sculptures."
Artworks in the exhibit titled "Wordless Obstruction" are, for many, familiar shapes and forms — a Star of David, a teepee and an arrow, for example. But Cloud challenges immediate associations with these shapes using different themes.
"One theme is newspapers," he said. "Each painting has a URL that leads to a New York Times online article about the shape, about a subject related to the shape of the painting."
Carolina Garibay
He said he hopes this changes how visitors view the paintings and questions their understanding of them.
"Hopefully there's a literary flexibility to these, where there's different stories, there's different characters, there's different mediums," Cloud said.
He said he wants the exhibit to speak to young people in particular.
"I'm glad that the work is here to influence young people who are in high school," he said. "That's, I think, when you're deciding to become an artist and that they can just have an idea of the kinds of things that are possible."
