Guest guest Posted July 9, 2008 Report Share Posted July 9, 2008 In the Beginning There Was the End, In the End There Was the Beginning 2008 Mixed media installation Commissioned by the Contemporary Jewish Museum Courtesy of the artist, James Cohan Gallery, New York, and Dunn and Brown Contemporary, Dallas For the past fifteen years, Trenton Doyle Hancock has been creating an epic story that is biblical in nature and scale. For this exhibition, he made In the Beginning There Was the End, In the End There Was the Beginning, in which he recounts an early episode of this story. Hancock tells the violent origin story of his main characters, the Mounds—half-human and half-plant creatures that are almost destroyed by their jealous half-siblings in a bloody massacre. In the end, the halfsiblings get swallowed into a lower realm, eventually becoming the Vegans, a new race and Hancock's antagonists in this master narrative. The surviving Mounds, the protagonists, are rescued and replanted by their loving father Homerbuctus. Hancock's text, drawn directly on the wall, tells the story while the violent attack of the Mounds is illustrated in the wallpaper which serves as a backdrop. The large canvas and the drawing on the far wall depict the attack in more detail, while the smaller works document the next series of events in this unraveling story. Hancock sees parallels between his mythology and Genesis—the garden setting, betrayal, the use of the tree to corrupt and kill, and the murdering of siblings that gives way to a race in need of redemption. http://www.thecjm.org/index.php? option=com_ccevents & scope=exbt & task=detail & oid=25 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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