Trenton Doyle Hancock: Me a Mound

It's the Mounds versus the Vegans in their inaugural published battle, and the heat is on. This first monograph and storybook from a major young African-American artist describes an ancient conflict: the peaceful, organic Mounds may have been created by the same father, Homerbuctas, who made their violent, nightmarish enemies the Vegans, but the two clans have been caught up in a tragi-comic struggle through nearly a decade's installations, paintings, drawings and etchings. Me a Mound combines biblical allusions, gags, food, and sex as it describes their saga in Hancock's laconic Texan prose and lays it out in his explosively colorful paintings. It's filled with new work created just for the book and a comprehensive overview of Hancock's oeuvre, on top of the entire Mounds versus Vegans saga to date, plus trading cards and inserts. Once readers have ventured through the die-cut cover into Hancock's universe--whether they are followers of contemporary art who recognize his name from two successive recent Whitney Biennials, fans of graphic novels, or general-interest browsers drawn in by the book's bright, cartoonish look--they will find it hard to see the world in quite the same way again.