'It's Just a Matter of Trust at this Point (for Chadwick)' is a large, iconic portrait of a helmeted head that intermingles fiction, autobiography, art historical reference, and cultural commentary....
"It's Just a Matter of Trust at this Point (for Chadwick)" is a large, iconic portrait of a helmeted head that intermingles fiction, autobiography, art historical reference, and cultural commentary. Hancock illustrates his doppelganger Torpedo Boy clad in his battle armor: an American football uniform. The face mask of his football helmet is as if crafted from the bones, in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to deter his ossiform enemies. There is an Olmec quality to the head, yet the work also recalls Charles White’s heroic portraiture of Black Americans in the 1930s and WPA-era representations of strength. As an adolescent in Texas, Hancock played football, an unequivocally and evocatively American obsession. Football is deeply enmeshed within notions of American masculinity, and has been presented within popular culture as a heroic narrative of masculine grit and character. Hancock often co-opts the trappings of the game in his work, mining his past to weave an exploration of cultural values into his own proxy hero’s journey. As he notes, “Torpedo Boy is a vehicle to display and deal with artistic power and desire.”
Consequences: A Parlor Game, National Academy of Design at the National Arts Club, New York, NY, February 7 - March 17, 2022 Something American, James Cohan, 48 Walker Street, New York, NY, September 17 - October 17, 2020