0:00:07.399,0:00:12.316
[TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK: REAL BIOGRAPHY]

0:00:21.100,0:00:22.698
[Houston, Texas, June 2002]

0:00:22.840,0:00:27.742
In this image here, we have Mound #1, "The Legend,"

0:00:27.742,0:00:32.044
being attacked by Vegans, who are the bad guys.

0:00:32.212,0:00:36.073
And what they're doing is ripping his fur off

0:00:36.367,0:00:39.380
and ripping into his skin.

0:00:39.698,0:00:42.287
And they're going to take the mound meat

0:00:42.287,0:00:47.086
and dump it down the toilet bowl, and convert it into tofu.

0:00:50.147,0:00:52.388
I've just matured in a lot of ways,

0:00:52.388,0:00:58.074
and the things that were... I felt were super important to me as a young guy,

0:00:58.074,0:00:59.980
they're kind of trivial now.

0:00:59.980,0:01:00.967
[TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK: ...AND THEN IT ALL CAME BACK TO ME]

0:01:00.967,0:01:04.686
And, I think that's where this show is decidedly different than

0:01:04.686,0:01:06.767
some of the past efforts.

0:01:07.447,0:01:11.156
If the conceptual material in the work isn't about Mounds or Vegans,

0:01:11.156,0:01:13.752
or some story that I've made up,

0:01:13.752,0:01:16.710
what's a story in my life that's a real story?

0:01:16.791,0:01:19.081
[James Cohan Gallery, November 2012]

0:01:21.130,0:01:26.280
The floor tile in the painting "The Den"

0:01:26.280,0:01:32.687
is a motif that I grew up with in my grandmother's home in Paris, Texas.

0:01:33.088,0:01:37.001
My grandmother moved out of that house years ago,

0:01:37.001,0:01:39.272
so I kind of forgot about it,

0:01:39.950,0:01:42.249
and there weren't many pictures.

0:01:43.107,0:01:47.178
I was up in Ithaca speaking at Cornell last year.

0:01:47.718,0:01:50.548
A graduate student had me over to his place

0:01:50.548,0:01:52.978
and we were listening to music, and I was like,

0:01:52.978,0:01:54.446
"Hey, where's your restroom?"

0:01:54.446,0:01:59.981
And he pointed my upstairs, and I went and was just knocked aback

0:01:59.981,0:02:04.530
because I looked down and on the floor was that tile,

0:02:04.876,0:02:06.400
which I hadn't seen in so long.

0:02:06.400,0:02:08.529
So it was like a sensory punch.

0:02:08.649,0:02:13.148
So I got out my phone and I started taking pictures of this guy's bathroom.

0:02:14.318,0:02:16.508
I learned how to draw on that floor.

0:02:16.508,0:02:20.380
She would throw, you know, paper and some crayons over there.

0:02:20.380,0:02:24.549
She would watch the 700 Club and sew on her quilts,

0:02:24.549,0:02:28.179
or gossip on the phone while I was down there, on that floor.

0:02:28.179,0:02:32.147
So I was very close to it, and internalized it.

0:02:35.874,0:02:37.749
The paintings kind of have slowed down,

0:02:37.749,0:02:40.148
I was just doing a lot of drawings and

0:02:40.148,0:02:42.781
kind of taking it easy and decompressing,

0:02:42.781,0:02:45.318
and kind of catching up with life.

0:02:47.763,0:02:49.918
I went through a break up.

0:02:50.357,0:02:52.852
Like, there were births. There were deaths.

0:02:52.862,0:02:58.779
There were these very real things that caused me to reevaluate

0:02:58.779,0:03:02.048
what's worthy of my time in the studio

0:03:02.048,0:03:04.757
when time is such a limited thing.

0:03:05.721,0:03:09.323
And I don't know how these things cosmically line up,

0:03:09.323,0:03:13.594
but that tile was revealed to me at the exact right time.

0:03:13.594,0:03:17.486
Like, wow, I was looking for a new ground to stand on

0:03:17.486,0:03:19.349
and I found it in this tile,

0:03:19.349,0:03:21.948
so that pattern is a truth.

0:03:22.441,0:03:25.948
It's like I could have easily not gone to the guy's house and seen it.

0:03:35.349,0:03:38.718
I'd already dealt with the Mounds and the Vegans for,

0:03:38.718,0:03:42.161
I don't know, eight years, or nine years even.

0:03:43.241,0:03:48.929
It was about this subculture that wanted to regain their humanity through color.

0:03:48.929,0:03:51.318
I'd done a ballet based around it.

0:03:51.318,0:03:55.867
So, in some ways, seeing the characters come to life in front of me and dance,

0:03:55.867,0:04:01.842
was, like, "Okay, how much further do I want to go with this kind of characterization?"

0:04:02.040,0:04:05.611
The very personal things were in the old work,

0:04:05.611,0:04:08.782
it was just really codified and it was, like, hidden.

0:04:09.165,0:04:12.542
Maybe it's time to start dealing with real-life stuff.

0:04:13.917,0:04:19.275
So that same kind of reflexive thing that was going on with the work before--

0:04:19.275,0:04:21.811
that was me and these codified characters--

0:04:21.811,0:04:24.967
then became me and my real biography.

0:04:25.178,0:04:28.580
It's like, okay, deal with real stuff,

0:04:28.580,0:04:32.085
and, just see where that goes.

0:04:33.442,0:04:35.289
So I'm figuring out new filters,

0:04:35.289,0:04:37.815
and ways to figure out what's important,

0:04:37.815,0:04:39.440
what do I follow up on.

0:04:40.040,0:04:44.087
But, I know that most of it is going to start with the self,

0:04:44.087,0:04:45.614
and that's why the show is titled,

0:04:45.614,0:04:47.500
"...And Then It All Came Back to Me".

0:04:47.500,0:04:53.517
This idea of self portraiture started to become the new character.