Image via camdenartscentre.org. |
Glenn Ligon: Call
and Response
October 10, 2014
- January 11, 2015
Arkwright Road
London, UK
From Regen Projects e-blast:
Over the autumnal months, Camden Arts Centre presents Glenn Ligon: Call
and Response, the first exhibition in a UK public gallery for the
celebrated American artist.
One of America's most distinguished contemporary artists, Ligon
(b.1960) has been deeply engaged with the written word throughout his career.
Drawing attention to the problems of language and representation, he addresses
pressing and challenging topics of race, language and sexuality. His works
reconsider and re-present American history, especially narratives of slavery
and civil rights, within a contemporary context. Best known for his stenciled
text based paintings, he weaves together wide-ranging influences from
literature, visual arts and popular culture. Over the past 10 years, Ligon has
also been dedicated to interrogating these themes through his prolific and
astute writing and interviews.
For his exhibition at Camden Arts Centre, Ligon presents a new
series of large paintings based on the 1966 seminal taped-speech work, Come
Out, by Minimalist composer Steve Reich. Come Out is drawn
from the testimony of six black youths arrested for committing a murder during
the Harlem Race Riot of 1964. Known as the 'Harlem Six', the case galvanized
civil rights activists for a generation, bringing to attention police brutality
against black citizens. Echoing Reich's overlapping repetition of words and
phrases, Ligon's silkscreen paintings overlay the words to create slowly
shifting and rhythmic effects.
Ligon is creating a new neon work, which draws on the words of
Daniel Hamm, one of the 'Harlem Six', describing the police beatings. Neon
letters, suspended for visitors to walk amongst, blink on and off in a cycle
reflecting Reich's work. Ligon's neon works continue his interest in pushing
text and speech to the point of abstraction. As with his paintings, they
encourage the viewer to oscillate between reading and looking.
A new multi-screen video work uses footage of comedian Richard
Pryor's 1982 stand-up performance, Live on Sunset Strip. Ligon has reorganized
and refilmed the recorded material to emphasize Pryor's emphatic body language,
movement and expressions, removing articulated words to focus on body language
and the performative delivery of speech.
Published to coincide with the exhibition:
Glenn Ligon: Come
Out
Published by Ridinghouse
Text by Megan Ratner
For further information
please visit http://ridinghouse.co.uk
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