Trenton Doyle Hancock, The Referee, 2014, Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 66 inches x 108 inches. Courtesy of Hales Gallery, London
This vivid and jam-packed work in acrylic paint part of an intriguing-looking new group show at Shulamith Nazarian gallery in Venice.
Phantom Limb include works by the prolific Houston-based Trenton Doyle Hancock, as well as by Scott Anderson, Wendell Gladstone, Maja Ruznic, and May Wilson.
Hancock’s work interlace personal memoir with the history of painting and pop-cultural pulp imagery. The artist transforms formal decisions — the use of color, language, and pattern — into opportunities to build narrative, develop sub-plots, and overturn symbolic meaning. Infused with mythologies presented at an operatic scale, his exuberant and subversive storylines employ a variety of cultural tropes, ranging in tone from comic-strip superhero battles to medieval morality, where text and abstraction both drive and complicate the narrative. Phantom LImb | Shulamith Nazarian Gallery, Venice | opens Thurs Aug 4