Glenn Ligon

 
Glenn Ligon (born 1960 in New York, where he lives and works) belongs to a generation of artists who came to prominence in the late 1980s on the strength of conceptually based paintings and phototext works, investigating the social, linguistic, and political constructions of race, gender and sexuality. Informed by his experiences as an African American and as a gay man living in the United States, his art is a sustained meditation on issues of quotation, the presence of the past in the present, and the representation of self in relation to culture and history. It incorporates sources as diverse as James Baldwin's literary texts, Martin Luther King's speeches, and Richard Pryor's stand-up comedy routines. The development of ideas around artmaking is central to his aspirations as an artist, both as the conceptual underpinning for his art and as a critique of the society in which we live.
Glenn Ligon has exhibited in numerous institutions around the world. He had two retrospective shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2011) and at the Toronto Plant Power Contemporary Art Gallery (2005). Ligon also participated in the Venice Biennale (2015), the Berlin Biennale (2014), and the Istanbul Biennale (2011). His work is featured in several international collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Centre Georges Pompidou and the Tate Modern.
 
Glenn Ligon - Debris Field / Notes for a Poem on the Third World / Soleil Negre
2018
bilingual edition (English / French)
Is-Land
Catalogue of the American artist's exhibition at Galerie Chantal Crousel: the publication presents a series of new works (neon, painting, drawing) inspired by texts by Gertrude Stein and Pier Paolo Pasolini, and by the artist's reflections on language, race and gender. The book includes poems by writer, artist and Act Up activist Gregg Bordowitz, and an essay by teacher and writer Sara Nadal-Melsio.
Glenn Ligon - Figure
2008
English edition
Yvon Lambert - Monographs and artists' books
sold out
A series of 50 unique silkscreens: each figure is a selfportrait of the artist. His head is represented from the front or from the back, showing and hiding the artist identity.


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