Glenn Ligon

(b. 1960)

Glenn Ligon’s work questions both abstraction and figuration as viable modes for interrogating race, language, and representation. Ligon began experimenting with text-based works in the late 1980s, often incorporating found text from writers like James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jean Genet, and began rendering them in neon around 2005. His first neon sculpture, Warm Broad Glow, illuminated the words “negro sunshine” from a Gertrude Stein text and was exhibited in the Renaissance Society’s 2008 exhibition, Black Is, Black Ain’t. Ligon was one of President Obama’s favorite artists, and his painting Untitled (Black Like Me #2) was exhibited in the White House from 2009 to 2013.