Trenton Doyle Hancock: "The Former and the Ladder or Ascension and a Cinchin'" | "Exclusive" | Art21

[Trenton Doyle Hancock: "The Former and the Ladder or Ascension and a Cinchin'"]

This is just a really small example

of what my floor looks like in my studio.

I just literally swept up a few things

and thought it would be nice to contextualize these

with the works that are up on the wall.

Just in my studio in general, I don't use erasers.

It's like I let the material accumulate

and I want you to see the history of everything.

So the idea of erasure only happens with a knife.

Like, I cut back into material to breathe new life into it--

or, to subtract.

I'm really happy this stayed intact.

It's a letter 'E'

that was inside of the "Former and Ladders" painting.

It was in his pants area.

I think it's the 'The' of that.

I guess I could've been a little bit more reckless

when I was cutting it out;

but, part of me was like, "No,"

"If you cut it in a way that it maintains its integrity,

then I can use this again in some other work."

I'm always going out and gathering different kinds of textures and materials

to keep things from being so stagnant or inbred.

Like, that work has probably fifteen years worth of collage material in it.

So, it's kind of fun for me to go up and say,

"Oh, that's from undergrad."

"Oh, I remember I did that in grad school."

"This is one of the first Mounds I made,

that I decided to cut up and put in here."

So it's like a little time capsule that unfolds,

and the challenge was to orchestrate it in such a way

that it didn't feel overwhelming--

it just felt like it was unfolding

in a way that was natural.

And it's about busting, maybe, out of shackles

and trying to get free of something.

So this painting, in a way,

has every move that I've ever made in a painting,

in one painting.

I had done all these smaller works

that had figures in them;

but, they weren't interacting with anything.

There were these invisible forces binding them,

but there were these kinds of tortured characters.

With this work, I wanted it to kind of

keep that idea of torture.

Like, okay, this character is in a predicament

that doesn't seem comfortable;

but, I wanted to give him some sort of agency

that maybe he can get out of it--

or he's on his way out.

This painting was fully orchestrated in a different way

than some of the other ones,

where I had to kind of feel through them.

I could show you the sketch that I did before this painting.

And it's literally six or seven marks on a white sheet of paper.

Like, I knew what this painting was going to be from that.

So, there were no false starts when I went to work on it--

this calculated subtraction.

So all of these other works

went from birth all the way up to maturity

and that painting just sat in the corner

and was like,

"Hey,"

"You gonna work on me?"

"It's been two months."

"You gonna do something?"

And I was like, "Hey, I got this."

I got this little sketch--

I know what you're going to be.

There's lots of things in the work

that play off of one another.

There's the very organic,

softer-edged material.

And then there's that very hard-edged ladder in the middle

that anchors it all.

The pencil for me is this symbol--

it's like a weapon.

'No regrets' on the eraser,

that is just my little pun or joke.

But it's also about my life.

Like, I do have regrets--

I think everyone has regrets,

even if they don't admit to them.

But, artistically, I don't.

And I think everything happens in the way that it should

in terms of the art.