In his first major solo exhibition in London, “I Want to Be at the Meeting After the Separation,” American painter Trenton Doyle Hancock will present new works featuring his vividly cartoonish creations at Hales Gallery in London.The works will revisit Hancock’s recurring theme of issues of morality and ethics through the lens of American pop culture, comic book imagery, and the aesthetic of classic prints.The new paintings will feature two opposing forces — Loid, a being with stark, paternal energy illustrated in black and white, and Painter, a being with lenient, maternal energy illustrated in color. The two characters are part of Hancock’s on-going story saga and are reunited after having been separated 50,000 years ago.According to Hancock, the re-joining of the two characters causes an upset in the atmospheric balance and sets the stage for the three large paintings in the exhibition, “I Want to Be at the Meeting After the Separation,” “Referee,” and “I Know Just How You Feel.” These paintings illustrate the adjustment of the viewer’s eyes and mind after the atmospheric shift, deciding when one being stops and the other begins.The title “I Want to Be at the Meeting After the Separation” comes from a verse in a popular gospel hymn performed at American Baptists churches. Hancock was raised in a Christian household and derives much of his creative and moral principles from the experience, perhaps in contradiction to the experience. This exhibition continues Hancock’s ongoing grand saga of character in stages of birth, death, afterlife, and dream-like worlds. Hancock describes his new body of work as “a new beginning” with the entrance of the characters of Loid and Painter.Trenton Doyle Hancock’s “I Want to Be at the Meeting After the Separation” is on view May 23-July 4 at Hales Gallery in London.
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