TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK

Matthew

APR 17 – SEP 13, 2015

Museum

In April, The Ringling will premiere a new project by the acclaimed American artist, Trenton Doyle Hancock. Hancock was selected by a national panel of museum curators as the 2013 recipient of the Greenfield Prize awarded in conjunction with The Hermitage Artist Retreat. Over the past decade, Hancock has become known as one of the most inventive artists at work today. He is best known for his extended series of visual work that develops the intricate personal mythology of the Mounds and the Vegans, two diametrically opposed universal forces that play out the archetypal battle between good and evil. His work provides the space for him to develop complicated visual narratives with many plots and subplots, and this personal cosmology has been explored in works on paper, painting, installations, and even a ballet. Hancock mines traditionally ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultural sources to produce his own visual universe citing influences as varied as Hieronymus Bosch and Max Ernst to the outsider artist Henry Darger and the cartoonist/illustrator R. Crumb.

Trenton Doyle Hancock is an avid collector of action figures, a passion that began for him in childhood. His Greenfield Commission will be the first step down the path of a completely new and monumental project. Mining the personal mythology he has created, Hancock is now interested in seeing the characters that make up this narrative come to life. This exhibition will be the first phase in realizing a new series of action figures and dolls as well as a film in the guise of a television commercial promoting these characters. According to Hancock in this commercial, “the product that I would be selling [would] not only [be the] toys but sensibilities from another time, a time when toys were better, when horror films and children’s fantasy entertainment was better.” So, through this project, he will circle back to his childhood fascinations with horror films and action figures, fascinations which have carried over into adulthood and influenced his multi-faceted oeuvre. This exhibition will provide an entrance into the working process of one of the most celebrated artists of his generation as well as a tantalizing glimpse at his vision for the next phase of his artistic practice.

Trenton Doyle Hancock will be collaborating with the University of South Florida GraphicStudio to produce the toys and packaging. As such, this project will be the fruition of three of the Gulf Coast’s leading arts institutions: The Ringling, GraphicStudio, and The Hermitage Artist Retreat demonstrating again the dynamism of our cultural landscape and our commitment to the highest level of artistic achievement.