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 own personal experience, art historical canon, comics and superheroes, pulp fiction, and myriad pop culture references, resulting in a complex amalgamation of characters and plots possessing universal concepts of light and dark, good and evil, and all the grey in between.
As a whole, Hancock’s highly developed cast of characters acts out a complex mythological battle, creating an elaborate cosmology that embodies his unique aesthetic ideals, musings on color, language, emotions and ultimately, good versus evil. Hancock’s mythology has been translated to the stage in an original ballet, Cult of Color: Call to Color, commissioned by Ballet Austin and created by Trenton Doyle Hancock, choreographer Stephen Mills, and composer Graham Reynolds. The ballet performances debuted in Austin in April 2008. Hancok has created an original mural for the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Dallas, TX, as well as a site specific installation entitled, A Better Promise, at the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle, WA.
Trenton Doyle Hancock was born in 1974 in Oklahoma City, OK. Raised in Paris, Texas, Hancock earned his BFA from Texas A&M University, Commerce and his MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia. Hancock was featured in the 2000 and 2002 Whitney Biennial exhibitions, becoming one of the youngest artists in history to participate in this prestigious survey. His work has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at The University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa; The Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah and Atlanta; The Weatherspoon Museum, Greensboro; The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; The Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; Institute for Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Olympic Sculpture Park at the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Hancock’s work is in the permanent collections of several prestigious museums, including the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth, Fort Worth; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Akron Art Museum, Akron; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; and il Museo di arte modernae contemporanea, Trento, Italy. The recipient of numerous awards, Trenton Doyle Hancock lives and works in Houston.
