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In "Painter and Loid Struggle for Soul Control," a cowering black and white figure looks on in terror as a frenzied forest appears to descend upon him. This three-dimensional mixed media piece uses a combination of objects such as bottle caps, cut-out letters amassed in plastic bags, scraps of tin foil, pieces of fleece and the repetition of the phrase "You deserve less."
Welcome to the dream world of Trenton Doyle Hancock, one of the artists whose work is currently on display at the Blanton Museum's New Now Next collection of American and Latin American contemporary artists.
"Trenton's piece is a shining example of contemporary painting," says Kelly Baum, assistant curator of American and Contemporary Art at the Blanton. "It is taking painting in radically new directions, in terms of material and style and content."
Hancock was born in 1974 in Oklahoma City, raised in Paris, Texas. He is one of the youngest artists to be featured in the Whitney Biennial, a world-renowned exhibition in New York showcasing the finest of contemporary American artists.
Themes of Christianity, creation myths, race and politics are interwoven throughout Hancock's work. His pieces are centered around an elaborate narrative involving mythical creatures called the Mounds. "The Mounds are half-man, half-beasts who possess special spiritual powers," Baum says. "Painter is a nurturing maternal figure represented by strokes of brightly colored paint. Loid is a domineering, analytic father figure, represented by the black-and-white text. The painting takes place at the moment when [one of the Mounds] Legend is dying. The pink you see on his body is what the artist refers to as 'Mound meat.' Both Painter and Loid want to own his soul because he is such a powerful creature."
Hancock frequently incorporates discarded objects into his pieces. In an interview for the PBS series "Art:21," he said, "I started to realize that the content of the stories that I was interested in had a lot to do with something being broken down or built up or something having to be rescued." The Mounds themselves seem to be in need of rescue, appearing vulnerable at the mercy of the overbearing landscapes in which they exist."
The Blanton's New Now Next exhibit runs through August 13.
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