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Glenn Ligon: Work, Work, Work, Work, Work, Work

Sale price$55.00

Glenn Ligon’s documentation of his studio and practice offers insight into the way the artist sees his work and understands his process. This artist book—focusing on the past four years—traces the trajectory of Ligon’s art-making, intimately chronicling the development of paintings, neons, and works on paper, as well as time spent in his studio spaces and other personal moments.

Glenn Ligon: Work, Work, Work, Work, Work, Work
Glenn Ligon: Work, Work, Work, Work, Work, Work Sale price$55.00

Language

English

Publisher

Hauser & Wirth Publishers

Composition

Softcover in slipcase

Contributors

Gregg Bordowitz

Pages

304 pages

Size

25.6 x 21 cm

ISBN

9783906915661

Publication Date

Nov-21

The Artist

GLENN LIGON

Glenn Ligon was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1960. He graduated with a BA from Wesleyan University in 1982 and participated in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in 1985. His early paintings were largely abstract; he began adding language to them during the mid-1980s in order to explore questions around race, identity, and history. In the text-based works for which he is best known, Ligon looks to prominent writers and cultural figures such as Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Gertrude Stein, Jean Genet, James Baldwin, and Richard Pryor for source material. In addition to making paintings, works on paper, and prints, he began creating neons in 2005, incorporating a sculptural component into his practice. His work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (1997, 2015), Berlin Biennial (2014), Istanbul Biennial (2011, 2019), and Documenta XI (2002). In 2011, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented 'America', a comprehensive midcareer retrospective organized by Scott Rothkopf. Recent painting series include Debris Field and Static, which see Ligon move increasingly toward abstraction and varying degrees of legibility to reflect on the instability and limits of language in a “post-truth” world. He is also deeply engaged with the work of other artists and undertakes curatorial projects such as 'Blue Black' at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Saint Louis, Missouri (2017), and 'Glenn Ligon: All Over the Place' at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, England (2024). Ligon lives and works in New York.

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