Online: Trenton Doyle Hancock: Sound Mounds

21 January - 20 February 2021

Shulamit Nazarian is pleased to present Sound Mounds, a series of new paintings by Houston-based artist Trenton Doyle Hancock.
 
Sound Mounds draw on the artist’s most iconic character: the Mound. Within Hancock’s epic mythology, the Mound is a good-natured being––half human and half plant––constantly under threat from more nefarious creatures. Situated within a sprawling narrative, Hancock uses his cast of characters to explore themes of good and evil, authority, race, moral relativism, and religion.

  • TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
    MOUND SOUND MOUND 12020
    Acrylic and paper on canvas
    18 x 24 inches
  • “Mounds are natural depositories for memories and other bits of discarded humanity, they are a way for us to build...

    “Mounds are natural depositories for memories and other bits of discarded humanity, they are a way for us to build a collective psycho-emotional hierarchy, as well as a way to describe an individual’s intuitive profile.”

    • TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK, Mound Sound Mound 6, 2020
      TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK, Mound Sound Mound 6, 2020
    • TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK, Mound Sound Mound 4, 2020
      TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK, Mound Sound Mound 4, 2020
  • For this series, the artist has drawn on the formal qualities of abstraction, utilizing a reductive color palette and singular form to structure intuitive and experimental small-scale paintings. Merging drawing, painting, and at times collage, these works are informed by the nature of sound itself, vibrating and refusing to materialize into a static form.

     

    Sound Mounds also call back to Phillip Guston, loosely referencing a series of works on paper by the artist from 1967-71. Hancock’s new series draws from the same quality of line, color palette, and mounded or hooded form for which Guston is so well known.

  • TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
    MOUND SOUND MOUND 9, 2020
    Acrylic and paper on canvas
    18 x 24 inches
     
  • In some ways, the Sound Mounds harken back to the Mound works I was making in the late 1990s when...

    Trenton Doyle Hancock

    MOUND SOUND MOUND 16, 2020

    Acrylic and paper on canvas

    18 x 18 inches

    SOLD

    In some ways, the Sound Mounds harken back to the Mound works I was making in the late 1990s when I was first developing the forms. Those works were probing and messy by design, and bore the markings of an anxious and hungry practice. There is a speed and immediacy that I've longed to weave back into my practice, and the "Sound Mound" works allow me to experiment with a variety of formal solutions and speeds.

    • TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK, Mound Sound Mound 10, 2020
      TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK, Mound Sound Mound 10, 2020
    • TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK, Mound Sound Mound 2, 2020
      TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK, Mound Sound Mound 2, 2020
  • Trenton Doyle Hancock received his MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia. His work was recently...

    Trenton Doyle Hancock received his MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia. His work was recently the subject of a solo exhibition at MASS MoCA, North Adams, and in 2014 his exhibition, Skin & Bones: 20 Years of Drawing at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, traveled to Akron Art Museum, OH; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; and Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art.

    The artist was featured in the 2000 and 2002 Whitney Biennial exhibitions, and his works are in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Dallas Museum of Art, TX; the Menil Collection, Houston, TX; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, NY; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.