1 00:00:07,399 --> 00:00:12,316 [TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK: REAL BIOGRAPHY] 2 00:00:21,100 --> 00:00:22,698 [Houston, Texas, June 2002] 3 00:00:22,840 --> 00:00:27,742 In this image here, we have Mound #1, "The Legend," 4 00:00:27,742 --> 00:00:32,044 being attacked by Vegans, who are the bad guys. 5 00:00:32,212 --> 00:00:36,073 And what they're doing is ripping his fur off 6 00:00:36,367 --> 00:00:39,380 and ripping into his skin. 7 00:00:39,698 --> 00:00:42,287 And they're going to take the mound meat 8 00:00:42,287 --> 00:00:47,086 and dump it down the toilet bowl, and convert it into tofu. 9 00:00:50,147 --> 00:00:52,388 I've just matured in a lot of ways, 10 00:00:52,388 --> 00:00:58,074 and the things that were... I felt were super important to me as a young guy, 11 00:00:58,074 --> 00:00:59,980 they're kind of trivial now. 12 00:00:59,980 --> 00:01:00,967 [TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK: ...AND THEN IT ALL CAME BACK TO ME] 13 00:01:00,967 --> 00:01:04,686 And, I think that's where this show is decidedly different than 14 00:01:04,686 --> 00:01:06,767 some of the past efforts. 15 00:01:07,447 --> 00:01:11,156 If the conceptual material in the work isn't about Mounds or Vegans, 16 00:01:11,156 --> 00:01:13,752 or some story that I've made up, 17 00:01:13,752 --> 00:01:16,710 what's a story in my life that's a real story? 18 00:01:16,791 --> 00:01:19,081 [James Cohan Gallery, November 2012] 19 00:01:21,130 --> 00:01:26,280 The floor tile in the painting "The Den" 20 00:01:26,280 --> 00:01:32,687 is a motif that I grew up with in my grandmother's home in Paris, Texas. 21 00:01:33,088 --> 00:01:37,001 My grandmother moved out of that house years ago, 22 00:01:37,001 --> 00:01:39,272 so I kind of forgot about it, 23 00:01:39,950 --> 00:01:42,249 and there weren't many pictures. 24 00:01:43,107 --> 00:01:47,178 I was up in Ithaca speaking at Cornell last year. 25 00:01:47,718 --> 00:01:50,548 A graduate student had me over to his place 26 00:01:50,548 --> 00:01:52,978 and we were listening to music, and I was like, 27 00:01:52,978 --> 00:01:54,446 "Hey, where's your restroom?" 28 00:01:54,446 --> 00:01:59,981 And he pointed my upstairs, and I went and was just knocked aback 29 00:01:59,981 --> 00:02:04,530 because I looked down and on the floor was that tile, 30 00:02:04,876 --> 00:02:06,400 which I hadn't seen in so long. 31 00:02:06,400 --> 00:02:08,529 So it was like a sensory punch. 32 00:02:08,649 --> 00:02:13,148 So I got out my phone and I started taking pictures of this guy's bathroom. 33 00:02:14,318 --> 00:02:16,508 I learned how to draw on that floor. 34 00:02:16,508 --> 00:02:20,380 She would throw, you know, paper and some crayons over there. 35 00:02:20,380 --> 00:02:24,549 She would watch the 700 Club and sew on her quilts, 36 00:02:24,549 --> 00:02:28,179 or gossip on the phone while I was down there, on that floor. 37 00:02:28,179 --> 00:02:32,147 So I was very close to it, and internalized it. 38 00:02:35,874 --> 00:02:37,749 The paintings kind of have slowed down, 39 00:02:37,749 --> 00:02:40,148 I was just doing a lot of drawings and 40 00:02:40,148 --> 00:02:42,781 kind of taking it easy and decompressing, 41 00:02:42,781 --> 00:02:45,318 and kind of catching up with life. 42 00:02:47,763 --> 00:02:49,918 I went through a break up. 43 00:02:50,357 --> 00:02:52,852 Like, there were births. There were deaths. 44 00:02:52,862 --> 00:02:58,779 There were these very real things that caused me to reevaluate 45 00:02:58,779 --> 00:03:02,048 what's worthy of my time in the studio 46 00:03:02,048 --> 00:03:04,757 when time is such a limited thing. 47 00:03:05,721 --> 00:03:09,323 And I don't know how these things cosmically line up, 48 00:03:09,323 --> 00:03:13,594 but that tile was revealed to me at the exact right time. 49 00:03:13,594 --> 00:03:17,486 Like, wow, I was looking for a new ground to stand on 50 00:03:17,486 --> 00:03:19,349 and I found it in this tile, 51 00:03:19,349 --> 00:03:21,948 so that pattern is a truth. 52 00:03:22,441 --> 00:03:25,948 It's like I could have easily not gone to the guy's house and seen it. 53 00:03:35,349 --> 00:03:38,718 I'd already dealt with the Mounds and the Vegans for, 54 00:03:38,718 --> 00:03:42,161 I don't know, eight years, or nine years even. 55 00:03:43,241 --> 00:03:48,929 It was about this subculture that wanted to regain their humanity through color. 56 00:03:48,929 --> 00:03:51,318 I'd done a ballet based around it. 57 00:03:51,318 --> 00:03:55,867 So, in some ways, seeing the characters come to life in front of me and dance, 58 00:03:55,867 --> 00:04:01,842 was, like, "Okay, how much further do I want to go with this kind of characterization?" 59 00:04:02,040 --> 00:04:05,611 The very personal things were in the old work, 60 00:04:05,611 --> 00:04:08,782 it was just really codified and it was, like, hidden. 61 00:04:09,165 --> 00:04:12,542 Maybe it's time to start dealing with real-life stuff. 62 00:04:13,917 --> 00:04:19,275 So that same kind of reflexive thing that was going on with the work before-- 63 00:04:19,275 --> 00:04:21,811 that was me and these codified characters-- 64 00:04:21,811 --> 00:04:24,967 then became me and my real biography. 65 00:04:25,178 --> 00:04:28,580 It's like, okay, deal with real stuff, 66 00:04:28,580 --> 00:04:32,085 and, just see where that goes. 67 00:04:33,442 --> 00:04:35,289 So I'm figuring out new filters, 68 00:04:35,289 --> 00:04:37,815 and ways to figure out what's important, 69 00:04:37,815 --> 00:04:39,440 what do I follow up on. 70 00:04:40,040 --> 00:04:44,087 But, I know that most of it is going to start with the self, 71 00:04:44,087 --> 00:04:45,614 and that's why the show is titled, 72 00:04:45,614 --> 00:04:47,500 "...And Then It All Came Back to Me". 73 00:04:47,500 --> 00:04:53,517 This idea of self portraiture started to become the new character.