Hat & Beard Press - Cody Hudson: Selected Universal Portals

Clothbound foil-stamped hardcover. 
6.5 in. x 9 in. | 16.51 cm. x 22.86 cm.
176 pages. 

Through the arrangement of peculiar abstract symbols and brightly colored shapes, Cody Hudson’s art hints at a profoundly insightful approach to seeing. The Chicago-based artist and designer evokes the natural world through his work, forging a transcendent and mysterious visual space.

In Selected Universal Portals, Hudson’s second book of art, he has assembled dozens of works completed between 2014 and 2023. The collection includes paintings, sculptures, and large-scale site-specific installations and murals informed as much by his interior reflections as by his external surroundings. The combined works embrace a strong sense of narrative yet retain a sensation of mystery. The compositions point to a deep phenomenology, often using unusual and overlapping shapes, inverted and cropped symbols, and brightly colored forms that build into a contemplative set of images, confessional responses to ongoing metaphysical and ontological inquiries. In effect, they are a multilayered, visual expression of the artist’s own experiences.

As he moves between drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and public art, Hudson employs a multifaceted editing process, propagating new imagery through the different modes of making, frequently relocating thoughts and ideas from one context to another. The titles for his works, combined with the introspective imagery, capture his oscillating feelings of loneliness, hopefulness, darkness, positivity, love of family, self-reflection, and isolation, the results of which eclipse obvious connotations, drifting instead into poetic visual spaces.

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Cody Hudson (b. 1971) lives and works in Chicago. His artistic practice spans across multiple mediums, including painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, and public art. Under the name Struggle Inc., Hudson also does commercial design work.