James Cohan Gallery Shanghai is pleased to present an artist talk by Trenton Doyle Hancock on Tuesday, October 27th, 5pm. The event is free and open to the public. Two print portfolios Fix (2007) and The Ossifies Theosophied (2005) will be on display in conjunction with the event.

Trenton Doyle Hancock produces work that encompasses a wide variety of media from painting, collage, sculpture, printmaking, to the performing arts; however, primarily, Hancock identifies painting as being central to his practice. Well-known for sprawling works, Hancock uses storytelling as a way of creating context for his paintings albeit an absurdist one populated by imaginary characters like the bony, nocturnal Vegans who are engaged in an epic battle with the gentle forest dwelling Mounds, and others like helpers Torpedo Boy, St. Sesom, and the Color Babies and enemies like the evil Betto. The artist's densely layered works are composed with a collision of symbols and visual tropes that create what he refers to as an "alternate universe." Hancock says, "Like our own corporeal universe, my painted universe is comprised of a series of systems within systems that extend inward microcosmically and outward macrocosmically. It is a universe that constantly questions itself and expands in order to accommodate answers to those questions".

Trenton Doyle Hancock is the 2007 Joyce Alexander Wein award winner from The Studio Museum, NY. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions, including In the Beginning: Artists Respond to Genesis, at the Contemporary Jewish Art Museum, San Francisco, CA, and was recently part of the Dargerism: Contemporary Artists and Henry Darger at the American Folk Art Museum, New York. He is included in Prospect 1 New Orleans Biennial, (2008/9). In April 2008, Hancock provided the narrative, costumes and set design for Cult of Color: Call to Color, a collaboration with choreographer Stephen Mills and composer Graham Reynolds for the Austin Ballet, TX. In 2007, the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, hosted Hancock's major European solo show, The Wayward Thinker, which traveled to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Holland. Hancock was one of the youngest artists ever to be included in the Whitney Biennial, in both 2000 and 2002. His works are included in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, NY; The Dallas Museum of Art, TX; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; The Netherlands; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Studio Museum of Harlem, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; and Museum di arte moderna e contemporanea, Trento, Italy.