Beschreibung:

Glenn Ligon Gold just us #7 2008 Acrylic and oilstick on canvas. 32 x 32 in. (81.3 x 81.3 cm). Signed, titled and dated “Glenn Ligon 2008 Gold Just us # 7” on the overlap.
Provenance Regen Projects, Los Angeles Catalogue Essay In an interview with Museo Magazine Glenn Ligon was asked about the legibility and comprehensive understanding of his works including texts as well as works not including words. Ligon responded: “From the first text paintings, which used quotations from authors like Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Genet, Walt Whitman, or Ralph Ellison, this question of legibility was foregrounded partially because the quotes that I was using in those early paintings always had the word “I” in them, and the titles of the paintings didn’t clearly identify them as coming from specific authors or specific essays or novels. So, there was always confusion for the viewer about who that “I” was. Over time, it became known that ‘Glenn Ligon makes text paintings using quotes,’ but even then, there was still confusion about that: What does it mean to take on another person’s words as a way of talking about the self? One of the things I’ve always been interested in was the connection or collision of identities—that something written by Hurston in the 20s could seem incredibly relevant and autobiographical in some sense, that one could inhabit it, in the way that when you were a kid, you wanted to be a rock star, and everything about that rock star seemed to express who you were. It’s the same kind of relationship to those texts for me: The text is something that I wanted to inhabit, and the way I chose to inhabit it was to make paintings that have quotes that create confusion about who’s speaking” (D. Drogin, “Glenn Ligon,” Museo Magazine, Issue 14). In his painting Gold Just Us #7, Ligon borrowed a joke from comedian Richard Pryor. Read More