Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing

...and then it All Came Back to Me, 2011
Mixed media on paper
9 × 8 inches
Framed: 11 13/16 × 10 5/8 inches
Collection KAWS, New York

New YorkArt & Culture

Flesh and Bone

Human frailties are writ large in Trenton Doyle Hancock's world of grotesque excess...

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.

@studiomuseum

Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing

Faster, 2010
Acrylic, mixed media on paper 13 1/2 × 16 inches
Zang Collection, London

Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing

The Bear Den, 2012
Acrylic on paper
12 1/4 × 12 1/4 (framed) inches
Collection Noel Kirnon, New York

Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing

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