Elmo Hood Built For Comebacks For Sale
Elmo Hood
Built For Comebacks, 2026
Mixed Media Playing Card on Wooden Backed Canvas | Signed
12 x 16 In
About this work
Elmo Wood has emerged as a distinctive voice in contemporary mixed media practice, gaining recognition for works that interrogate themes of resilience, chance, and American cultural mythology. His integration of found objects—particularly vintage playing cards—into layered compositions speaks to a broader artistic dialogue around material reclamation and narrative reconstruction. Wood's pieces have garnered attention from collectors drawn to artists who bridge conceptual rigor with accessible visual language, positioning him as a figure to watch in the evolving landscape of emerging contemporary art. Built For Comebacks exemplifies Wood's ongoing exploration of gaming ephemera as symbolic vessels. The playing card, an object laden with associations of fortune, risk, and cyclical possibility, becomes a central protagonist mounted against the tactile warmth of wooden-backed canvas. The title itself functions as both declaration and quiet defiance, suggesting narratives of perseverance that resonate beyond the picture plane. Wood's choice of mixed media allows for a textural complexity that rewards sustained viewing, with surfaces that reveal subtle interventions upon closer inspection. At 12 x 16 inches, the work maintains an intimate scale that has become characteristic of Wood's signed pieces, inviting personal engagement rather than imposing monumental distance. The 2026 dating places this work within the artist's current period of production, a moment when his visual vocabulary has reached notable refinement while retaining the experimental impulse that defines his practice. Guy Hepner is pleased to offer this signed original and welcomes inquiries from collectors interested in acquisition.
Price on Application
Edition & Provenance
- Year
- 2026
- Medium
- Mixed Media Playing Card on Wooden Backed Canvas | Signed
More from this series
Elmo Hood
Find Your Line And Fucking Cross It
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I Still Believe In Me
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In The War Of Ego The Loser Always Wins
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Elmo Hood
May Flowers Grow In The Saddest Parts Of You
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New York Is A Verb
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New York Never Folder
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New York Never Wanted An Easy Story
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New York Punches
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There Are Two Kinds Of People In This World
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There Will Be Peace On Earth
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What Doesn't Kill Me Better Run
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Related Reading
About the Playing Cards Series
Elmo Hood's Playing Cards series is where his signature process began, and it remains the most collected body of work in his practice. Each piece starts with a found playing card, its printed color and imagery repurposed rather than covered, then built out with layered mixed media and mounted on wooden backed canvas.
The cards themselves carry the compositions. Kings and queens recur throughout, their existing linework absorbed into new characters and scenes. Hood works dark tones into the shading and outlines of each piece, giving the finished work a graphic, almost stencil-like edge that sits somewhere between pop art and street art.
The titles are part of the work. Lines like In The War Of Ego The Loser Always Wins and What Doesn't Kill Me read like aphorisms, pulling the series toward the same undercurrent of philosophy and self-examination that runs through Hood's practice more broadly. A recurring New York thread, seen in pieces like New York Is A Verb and New York Punches, reflects the city's pull on the artist and its recurring presence across this body of work.
Guy Hepner Gallery presents 15 works from the Playing Cards series, available through private sale. Each piece is signed by the artist. Complimentary valuations and current pricing are available on enquiry.
About Elmo Hood
Elmo Hood is a self-taught contemporary artist working at the intersection of pop art and mixed media. Born in 1989 in Southampton, England, he now lives and works in Brisbane, Australia.
Hood's career began in 2013 with a single collage made from two playing cards. The piece went viral, leading to a string of international exhibitions and a growing collector base that has followed his work ever since. Those early card pieces set the template for what would become his signature process: cutting, burning, and reassembling found materials to build emotionally charged compositions.
Today his work fuses pop art sensibility with layered mixed media technique. Playing cards remain central to his practice, their existing color and imagery repurposed into new palettes, while darker tones anchor the outlines and shading of each piece. Kings and queens recur throughout his output, alongside recurring nods to philosophy, religion, and the paranormal, giving the work a mythic, symbol-driven undercurrent beneath its pop surface.
Hood's work has been featured in British GQ, Forbes, Glamour, Wall Street International, and Made in Shoreditch, among other publications. He has exhibited across London, Paris, New York, Miami, Ibiza, Bahrain, and Munich, with pieces auctioned at the Houses of Parliament. His exhibition history includes solo shows such as Down the Rabbit Hole at Westbank Gallery, London, and House of Cards in Miami, alongside group exhibitions in New York and at the Bahrain Art Fair.