Have I noticed how Hancock’s work is ink-drawn but also collage but also mythic but also lifelike? If I see something he doesn’t, he wants to see it, too. But if I agree with him, he wants to know why. Duke is tall and commanding he laughs big and easy. The gallery feels like a lesson but also a test, a way to see if I’m just indulging a curious actor’s hobby. “I won’t tell if you touch it,” he stage-whispers, extending a hand to touch the art himself. Like Hancock’s work, it must be faced dead-on. You feel it, but it’s difficult to explain in small pieces. “Navigating a lot of these spaces as a Black person, people don’t understand what you’re going through,” he says. He sees a reflection of his own lived experience standing in this spot. From any other angle, the work looks like a wall of shaggy fur with random negative space. Duke likes the way you can only see the scene clearly head-on. Instead of featuring a mythic battle of epic proportions-like, say, a Marvel movie-the series shows Hancock trying to goad Torpedoboy into stepping on a stool to change a light bulb, with the intention of slipping a noose over him. Hancock riffs on the theme, depicting himself holding out a Klansman’s hood to his own alter ego, Torpedoboy. It’s from a series by Hancock inspired by the work of Canadian American painter Philip Guston, who portrayed Klansmen in mundane contexts, such as riding around in a car smoking. “He was able to speak about a layer of the work that I normally don’t get to talk about with people.”ĭuke and I pause in front of one of his favorite pieces. “He spoke about the work almost as if he was in the studio with me when I made it,” Hancock tells me later. AB+DMĪ few weeks earlier, Duke spent two hours walking through the gallery accompanied by Hancock and his wife, the artist JooYoung Choi. Robe and trousers by Dolce & Gabbana hat by Gucci sunglasses by Chrome Hearts necklace by Birthright Foundry lapel pin by Jacob & Co bracelet by David Yurman rings by Veneda Carter. The gallerist jumps in: “He masturbated in a field of flowers.” The father had an affair with the flowers. So he says he’ll educate me himself, opening a book of the artist’s materials: “These,” Duke points at two ink-and-paint-drawn figures, “are the father and mother of pretty much everything in his world. The last time he was here, the gallerist replies, Duke received their final copy. He asks the gallerist to pull a small comic-a primer on Hancock’s work-for me to look over. There’s something in these provocative pieces that captivates Duke. On display are fifteen works from the artist Trenton Doyle Hancock, who dreams up alter egos, villains, cartoonish Klansmen, and Technicolor creatures, conjuring a world from inspiration that’s part autobiography and part fantasy. But he has a creation myth to share when I arrive at the Shulamit Nazarian gallery in Los Angeles on a hot, sunny Tuesday afternoon. That Duke’s older sister graduated from high school early and eventually became an accomplished doctor didn’t really ease the pressure, either.ĭuke, thirty-six, is no man of the cloth. In one of our first conversations, he told me she was still holding out hope, imitating her thick Tobagonian accent: “‘Maybe you’ll still become a preacha!’” He playacts his loving but firm rebuff: “Lady,” he laughs, “give it up!”įor a certain kind of mother, and a certain kind of upbringing, a job in the church is the highest calling. Winston Duke's mother wanted him to be a pastor.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |