Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1110880
104 T wo of the most exciting talents to watch this spring in the national art scene are Houstonians: Trenton Doyle Hancock and JooYoung Choi. The former headlines in a rare solo for a Houston-based artist, at The Menil Collection and concurrently at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, where his "Mind of the Mound: Critical Mass" takes up its own football-sized building in the 19th-century mill complex turned art campus. Closer to home, Choi mines her own personal mythology informed by cartoon characters. Like Hancock, IMAGINARY WORLDS BY CATHERINE D. ANSPON. PHOTOGRAPHY KAELAN BURKETT, JENNY ANTILL CLIFTON, RONALD L. JONES. Trenton Doyle Hancock with Torpedoboy, at MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts THE EPIC INSTALLATIONS AND TIMELY IDEAS OF TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK AND JOOYOUNG CHOI her oeuvre questions race, identity, and America from the eyes of a child immigrant. They are, not coincidentally, married — and it would be hard to find a more suited pair of creatives. While they don't formally collaborate, cross-pollination and mutual inspiration are definitely taking place. The decade-younger Choi — who moved to Houston in 2012 after she and Hancock met when he a lectured at her Boston undergrad school — mounts her own impressive museum solo this spring. While hers is in the off- the-radar town of Beaumont, it's curated by Mariah Rockefeller for the Art Museum of Southeast Texas. AMSET has a reputation as an early talent scout; the intimate, avant- garde institution is supportive of a new generation of iconoclastic Texas artists. PaperCity has followed the careers of Hancock and Choi since we first visited their home five years ago. They appeared in our November 2014 issue, in a profile titled "Welcome to Wonderland." Since then, both of their stars in the art world have continued to rise. Hancock's is comparable to a supernova (if you don't believe us, read the latest issue of Artforum), while Choi's 2015 Lawndale Residency exhibition and inclusion in the 2017 Contemporary Arts Museum Houston group show "A Better Yesterday" signaled an impressive entry into the Texas talent pool. TDH is in the House It's a chilly Saturday in February, and Hancock and I meet with our photographer, Ronald L. Jones, in the artist's sprawling studio in the gentrifying Acres Homes neighborhood north of Garden Oaks. From its tidy exterior, the warehouse looks well-kept and unassuming. Inside, we gingerly PAGE 104 KAELAN BURKETT. PAGE 106, FROM TOP, RONALD L. JONES, JENNY ANTILL CLIFTON, THOMAS DUBROCK. PAGE 108 HANCOCK WORKS BY KAELAN BURKETT, CHOI WORK BY THOMAS DUBROCK. (continued on page 106) [ ] ART