The Akron Art Museum Board of Trustees recently approved two major purchases. This month, works by acclaimed contemporary artists Kiki Smith and Trenton Doyle Hancock wow visitors to the Sandra L. and Dennis B. Haslinger Family Foundation Galleries. The installation of these new acquisitions, along with several other works on view for the first time, bring a near-total makeover of galleries devoted to the theme of “Interior Landscapes,” dramatically altering their mood.
Trenton Doyle Hancock, Holed My Hand, 2010, acrylic and mixed media on paper, 98 3/4 in., x 133 in. x 3 1/2 in., Collection of the Akron Art Museum, Museum Acquisition Fund in memory of Dr. George and Margaret Seeley 2011.49.
Purchased in honor of Dr. Mitchell D. Kahan’s 25-year tenure as museum director, Smith’s Seer (Alice I) is a life size figure that is based on the role of the seer or oracle in classical Greek mythology as well as ideas from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The figure rests on the skirt of her dress, gazing into an imagined pool of water. Hovering slightly above the floor she appears to float. Her mysterious gaze lends the work a deeply reflective and even mystical mood.
Seer’s seemingly delicate surface—the figure’s face, hands and feet look like fine porcelain—belies its actual makeup, which is bronze. The metal surface is hidden under a layer of white auto body paint, rendering the figure dreamlike. The dress and hair suggest materials like plaster or wax rather than metal. The sculpture measures 63 ½ x 72 x 41 inches and was made in 2005. Purchase funds came from the museum’s Mary S. and Louis S. Myers Endowment Fund for Painting and Sculpture.
Equal parts drawing, painting and collage, Hancock’s Holed My Hand (98 3/4 in. x 133 in. x 3 1/2 in., 2010) is a sculpted paper pulp hand set against a background of collaged and painted drops. The work was bought in memory of George and Peg Seeley, longtime museum supporters, with income from the museum’s General Acquisition Endowment.
For the last decade, Hancock has chronicled the saga of two invented races of creatures. Holed My Hand represents a more abstract and metaphorical approach to storytelling for the artist. In his epic battle between good and evil, the hand has appeared as a pledge of faith and justice, as a symbol of support and strength or of control and power. In this work, the giant hand is wrought with crater-like holes, stigmata that allow drops of blood, sweat, tears, rain or possibly oil to slip through its grasp. States the artist, “Whose hand is that? I don’t know. . . . I like that there’s no answer.”
Holed My Hand adds another voice to the museum’s growing collection of works by contemporary African-American artists. It embodies Hancock’s obsessive style in its scale, use of materials and textures and expands the major themes of morality, acceptance and power in his ongoing saga.
Akron Art Museum
One South High, Akron, OH 44308
Tel: 330.376.9185
Fax: 330.376.1180
www.AkronArtMuseum.org
