Trenton Doyle Hancock performance as part of the project ‘Radical Presence’ in the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, December 11, 7PM.
Devotion, 2013-2014.
About:
Trenton Doyle Hancock is known for his epic mythology surrounding the fictional human/plant hybrids that he calls Mounds. The narratives featured in his prints, drawings, and collaged-felt paintings collectively relate their unfolding story. Having come to life 50,000 years ago when an ape-man masturbated into a field of flowers, the peaceful Mounds are constantly threatened by their mutant nemeses, the Vegans, who value the purity of compactness and oppose the Mounds’ expansive girth. The Mounds, as do most of the characters that inhabit his narrative, serve in some way as Hancock’s alter ego.
The structure on view here reprises part of Hancock’s performance Off Colored (1998). In that work, he brought a Mound character to life, wearing a colorful, fur-striped sheet that mimics the appearance of the Mounds in his paintings and works on paper. Whereas the initial performance, Off Colored, critiqued the commercialization of his work, for the present exhibition Hancock will perform a new interpretation entitled Devotion, which focuses on the spiritual legacies of his childhood.
In Devotion (2013), Trenton Doyle Hancock brings to life a mythical creature called the Mound—alternating between hymnal singing and Jell-O feedings in this performance that asks viewers to consider what it means to be devoted to an idea or vision.
