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Past Exhibitions


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A Better Promise

Aug 28 2010 – Mar 4 2012

Olympic Sculpture Park

PACCAR Pavilion

For the past ten years, Trenton Doyle Hancock has been developing an epic saga between the forces of good and evil, featuring imagined creatures called the Mounds and the Vegans. Mounds are peace-loving beings, while the Vegans are an evil race who has lost the ability to see in color. Influenced by comics, graphic novels and cartoons, Trenton Doyle Hancock has created a dynamic narrative of mythological proportions. In the site-specific installation at the Olympic Sculpture Park, the artist will continue telling his dramatic story through text and images, including wall drawings and some sculptural elements as well.

As part of the work, Hancock issues a “call to color” by encouraging visitors to bring their own morsels of color—in the form of plastic bottle caps—to the park and drop them into the work of art. Visitors are encouraged to bring plastic bottle caps ranging in all shapes and sizes from detergent bottles, to clear water bottles to the black and white caps from drink bottles.

—Marisa C. Sánchez, Assistant Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art

Educational Resources
To explore this exhibition a little deeper, download our bibliography.

The Bad Promise, 2008, Trenton Doyle Hancock, American, b. 1974, mixed media on canvas, 84 x 108 in., Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery, New York, © Trenton Doyle Hancock


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