For almost two decades, Trenton Doyle Hancock has been constructing his own fantastical narrative that continues to develop and inform his prolific artistic output. Part fictional, part autobiographical, Hancock’s work pulls from his personal experience, the art historical canon, comics and superheroes, pulp fiction, and myriad pop culture references, resulting in a complex amalgamation of characters and plots that possess universal concepts of light and dark, good and evil, and all the gray in between.

In November 2020, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston unveiled Color Flash for Chat and Chew, Paris Texas in Seventy-Two, Hancock’s monumental tapestry commission, which will remain on permanent display in the museum’s new Kinder Building. In 2019, a major exhibition of his work, Mind of the Mound: Critical Mass, opened at MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts. In 2014, his retrospective, Skin & Bones: 20 Years of Drawing, opened at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston and traveled to the Akron Art Museum, Ohio; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, Virginia. Hancock was featured in the 2000 and 2002 Whitney Biennial exhibitions, at the time becoming one of the youngest artists in history to participate in the prestigious survey. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions including Locust Projects, Miami; Temple Contemporary, Philadelphia; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Olympic Sculpture Park at the Seattle Art Museum; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland; and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Hancock’s work is in the permanent collections of many institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Brooklyn Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Dallas Museum of Art; Menil Collection, Houston; Morgan Library & Museum, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Akron Art Museum; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; and il Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea, Trento, Italy.

Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Department of Painting and Drawing.

View the Trenton Doyle Hancock SAIC Flaxman Library Resource Guide for additional information about the artist.

James Cohan Gallery