Hales Gallery is delighted to announce a solo exhibition by Trenton Doyle Hancock, Mind of the Mound: Critical Mass at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
In March 2019, Hancock will bring his richly detailed belief system, what he calls the “Mind of the Mound,” to MASS MoCA, fully integrating narrative, installation, and performance in his largest solo project to date — achieving “critical mass” of his vision. For Hancock, the Mound is more than just a character; it is a way of life. “Mounds are not only natural depositories for memories and other bits of discarded humanity, but they are a way for us to build a collective psycho-emotional hierarchy, as well as a way to describe an individual’s intuitive profile,” notes Hancock. In his work, the Mound is a site where the accumulation and classification of artworks exist alongside his toy collecting, comic books, superheroes, Garbage Pail Kids, and childhood drawings. Mounds proliferate through culture, functioning as a rhizomatic network — living structures connected via an underground root system — turning them into one being. The Mounds are the Tower of Babel, a beehive, and even the mashed potato tower from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), but are all interconnected. Hancock seamlessly blends culture and memory, not just for himself, but in order to release his mythology into the world where it gains yet additional layers and complexity.
Leaving no surface untouched, Hancock will invite visitors to step inside giant Mound sculptures, whose interiors will be kaleidoscopic installations: part toy fair, part museum, and part theme park, all run to wild proliferation. For example, one vignette will be designed to display Hancock’s recently created Halloween costumes, while another will function as a museum containing toys designed by the artist alongside a sampling from his own vast collection (an homage to artist Claes Oldenburg’s 1965-77 Mouse Museum, a Mickey Mouse-shaped structure full of the artist’s renditions of iconic pop culture objects). Also on view will be a large mound covered in handmade carpet, as well as an animatronic realization of a scene from the artist’s 2015 video What the Bringback Brought. These immersive environments will share space with wall drawings, paintings, and pages from the new 300-page graphic novel that Hancock is in the midst of creating.
Trenton Doyle Hancock
Mind of the Mound: Critical Mass
MASS MoCA
1040 Mass MoCA Way
North Adams
MA 01247
9 March 2019
For more information please visit the MASS MoCA website here.