My Constellation paintings embody the way I think about online news. To make them I use traditional totemic, pictographic and astrological methods to temporarily draw the sensual meaning out of my algorithmically curated online experiences.

My paintings are totemic shapes like stars, tents, arrows, diamonds and fish. I search American and Italian online news sources for current, shared interpretations of those shapes and fix those fleeting interpretations permanently into the painting by giving copying the story’s URL.

To accompany the shape and the story I create a pictorial world inside the totemic. I paint and collage pictograms of Turkeys, clovers, clouds, hearts, snowflakes, and planets to build a narrative context.

I extract character names from the story and give those names to allegorical birds (American Thanksgiving hand-turkeys) that populate the picture plane. I build empathy for those characters by arbitrarily assigning them various degrees of victimhood.

My paintings are totems for my global village. They are picket signs, deli placards, and high school pennants. My color is primary and muddy. I hope you enjoy them.

Bio

Mike Cloud’s solo exhibitions include: Called Ahead, Fahrenheit Gallery, Madrid, Spain (2024); Possessions: Mike Cloud presented by Thomas Erben Gallery as part of Frieze London, London, United Kingdom (2020); Tears in Abstraction, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, NY (2019); The Myth of Education, the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL (2018); Quiltmaking and the Over-Production of Opposites (2010). His work has been presented in group exhibitions in the United States and internationally, including at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL; The American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; Neuer Kunstverein Aschaffenburg (KunstLANDing), Aschaffenburg, Germany; and 47 Canal, New York, NY.

He has received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2024), a Hassem, Speicher, Betts, and Symons Purchase Fund Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York (2020); the inaugural Chiaro Award from the Headlands Center for the Arts (2015); and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Painting (2015).