Fleshy sacks of skin and bone known as “Mounds” engage in the age old battle of good and evil in the work of Trenton Doyle Hancock, currently the subject of a mid-career survey at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Part of a larger series of events celebrating artists of African descent, the Hancock exhibition focuses on the first two decades of the Houston artist’s practice.
A wide variety of Hancock’s work has been assembled for the New York audience, including drawings, collages and works on paper, with a style influenced by comics and graphic novels, music and film. Body image plays a big thematic role, as do diet and lifestyle choices, the consumerist culture, with an undercurrent of anxiety running throughout. Hancock’s fantastical landscapes are terra-formed with a gloopy landfill of human detritus, and these decomposing dumps are the stage on which the artist’s equally fantastical characters — and some all-too-human ones — plays out their symbolic dramas. Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing will run until 8 June.
Self-Portrait with Tongue, 2010
Acrylic and mixed media on paper
11 × 8 1⁄2 inches
Framed: 16 × 13 1⁄2 inches
Collection Charles Dee Mitchell, Dallas
Cave Scape #3, 2010
Ink on paper
6 1/2 × 10 inches
Framed: 10 7/8 × 13 7/8 inches
Courtesy the artist, James Cohan Gallery, New York,
and Hales Gallery, London
Cult of Color, 2004
Mixed media on paper
28 1/4 × 25 inches
Framed: 30 3⁄4 × 28 inches
Collection Rosa and Aaron H. Esman, M.D., New York
Buff and Britches, 2010
Acrylic and mixed media on paper
10 × 6 1/4 in
25.4 × 15.9 cm
Courtesy the artist and James Cohan Gallery, New York
Faster, 2010
Acrylic, mixed media on paper 13 1/2 × 16 inches
Zang Collection, London
Sometimes We Can’t Have the Things We Want, 2010
Acrylic and mixed media on paper
11 × 8 1⁄2 inches
Framed: 16 1⁄4 × 13 1⁄2 inches
Zang Collection, London
Fear Drawing, 2008
Mixed media on paper
9 × 12 inches
Framed: 12 × 14 3⁄4 inches
Courtesy the artist, James Cohan Gallery, New York,
and Hales Gallery, London
Goober’s Intrusion, 2006
Mixed media on paper
6 1/4 × 10 inches
Framed: 8 1⁄2 × 12 1⁄4 inches
Collection Jim and Paula Ohaus, Westfield, New Jersey
Population No. 1 (Landscape), 2004
Ink on paper
9 × 12 inches
Framed: 14 1/8 × 16 1/8 inches
Courtesy the artist, James Cohan Gallery, New York,
and Hales Gallery, London
The Bear Den, 2012
Acrylic on paper
12 1/4 × 12 1/4 (framed) inches
Collection Noel Kirnon, New York
Mom Said to Share, 1998
Ink, acrylic, and graphite on paper
15 × 11 in
Courtesy the artist, James Cohan Gallery, New York
and Hales Gallery, London
