Hancock’s candy-colored works are suffused with personal mythology, presented at an operatic scale. Through collage, paint, and accumulations of detritus, he creates exuberant and subversive narratives. Hancock employs a variety of cultural tropes, ranging in tone from comic-strip superhero battles to medieval morality plays, and in style from Hieronymus Bosch to Max Ernst. He uses language, which is embedded within the paintings and drawings, both as way to drive the narrative and as a central visual component.

For “In the Blestian Room,” Hancock adds new chapters to an ongoing absurdist parable of good and evil. The battle between the Vegans and the meat-eating Mounds takes a new turn, as Sesom, one of the Vegans, has a dream in which he discovers the liberating power of color. In “The Ossified Theosophied,” a transformed Sesom begins to make his miracle-machines, creating the life-affirming color blasts.

Simultaneous with the exhibition, Hancock will release a book entitled “Me a Mound,” published by Picturebox and distributed by D.A.P. This richly illustrated volume will present a retrospective of the artist’s work, showing the evolution of his distinctive saga.

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