Trenton Doyle Hancock b. 1974

Central to Good Grief, Bad Grief is a new group of paintings that build upon Hancock’s celebrated series Step and Screw, which portrays Torpedo Boy exchanging an object with a member of the Klu Klux Klan—modeled in the likeness of Philip Guston’s buffoonish klansman character. The framework of Step and Screw allows Hancock to merge the deeply problematic cultural and racial history of America with that of his own history as a painter.

Throughout the exhibition, we see vignettes of Torpedo Boy slowly morphing into a klansman, conflating and complicating the roles of these two iconic figures. Step and Screw: Seven Foot Furry Face Off borrows from the compositional structure of the Step and Screw series, but positions Hancock, as the artist, in a face-off with Torpedo boy, the superhero—both figures serving as alternate versions of the same person. What is being exchanged in this painting is the Klansman’s hood.

This work becomes an entry point to several other paintings in the exhibition, each showing Torpedo Boy and Hancock engaged in a physical struggle. In these new works, Torpedo Boy has clearly shifted from hero to villain as he attacks Hancock, while the artist is rendered gripping a past artwork. Richly metaphysical in nature, this new series depicts Hancock wrestling with ideas of self, the meaning of his own artwork, and the notion that to be valued by society while also Black, one must always demonstrate a certain level of excellence. As Hancock has previously stated, “We will know that racism has ended in this country when it is ok for a Black person to simply be mundane, a privilege that is so often afforded to others.”