James Cohan is pleased to announce Trenton Doyle Hancock's upcoming exhibition, Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston, on view from November 8, 2024 through March 30, 2025 at The Jewish Museum in New York. Organized by curator Rebecca Shaykin, this exhibition brings together the work of two trailblazing artists of different generations—whose lives, both personal and creative, share unexpected and often remarkable connections.
A defining figure of twentieth-century avant-garde art, the Jewish painter Philip Guston addressed racism, antisemitism, and his own complicity in white supremacy through his now iconic paintings of buffoonish Klansmen. Trenton Doyle Hancock, a leading Black contemporary artist and cartoonist known for his collaged canvases, similarly draws on the language of comics to challenge and comment upon the American condition. Over the past decade, Hancock has produced a significant body of work in which Torpedoboy, his superhero avatar, confronts Guston’s hooded alter-ego. This immersive installation will explore the artists’ shared commitment to investigating the legacy of white supremacy in the United States in ways that are both emotionally raw and deeply humorous.
The exhibition catalog is now available for preorder. In bringing together these two trailblazing artists from different generations, this publication situates Guston’s and Hancock’s works in their social and political contexts and explores the way that art, activism, and humor can deepen our understanding of the Black and Jewish experiences in the United States. The book also features Hancock in conversation with curator Valerie Cassel Oliver and award-winning author and cartoonist Art Spiegelman.