Artist: Hugo Baud

Rarity: Unique

Method: Paint on repurposed London bus panel 

Material: Aluminium

Size: 65 x 39 x 0.5cm

Weight: 1.3KG

Hugo Baud is Berlin based artist born in Montpellier in the South of France. Baud paints wiggly figures that bend over backwards to greet their audience, providing them with a grotesque mirror of their world. Enriched by skateboarding and street culture, his paintings create specific narratives of untouchable lives. The figures in his work depict the insides of individuals and twisted relationships. He does this by painting not the figures as they see themselves, but the masks they adorn and the ways in which those adornments cloud the soul.

The people in his paintings are barely human, simply four appendages and a nose. The rest of what we see are the tattoos, clothing, jewelry, and plethora of other, less materialistic ways in which the body can be decorated. Baud's work reminds us of our societal insecurity and the need to tell stories about ourselves in the grappling for meaning. Though we dont only adorn ourselves to hide, or fit in, but to bring the complexity of our past to the surface in a plea for validity.