Press Release: Glenn Ligon

02.15.98

THE INTERNATIONAL ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM

New Works: 98.1

Tadashi Kawamata, TOKYO, JAPAN

Glenn Ligon, BROOKLYN, NY

Constance Lowe, SAN ANTONIO, TX

Exhibition: March 12, 1998 pril 12, 1998

The International Artist-in-Residence Program, sponsored by ArtPace, A Foundation
for Contemporary Art | San Antonio presents New Works: 98.1, a series of
installations by artists living and working at ArtPace. Tadashi Kawamata, Glenn Ligon
and Constance Lowe were selected by the March 1996 IAIR Program Panel consisting of
Elizabeth Armstrong, David Avalos, Dana Friis-Hansen, Thelma Golden and Maaretta
Jaukkuri. Work produced by the artists during their eight-week residency will open to the
public on Thursday, March 12, 1998.

Glenn Ligon

Based in Brooklyn, NY, Glenn Ligon was born in 1960 in The Bronx. Ligon has had
numerous solo exhibitions , including The Brooklyn Museum, The San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art, The Des Moines Art center, MIT List Visual Art Center, The
Hirshhorn Museum, and The Whitney Museum of American Art. Ligon has been
included in over 100 group exhibitions, including the 1997 Venice Biennale and
the 1993 and 1991 Whitney Biennials. His work is included in the collections of
the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The
Hirshhorn Museum, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Walker Art Center. A
survey of Ligon's career is currently on exhibit at The Institute of Contemporary Art in
Philadelphia.

Ligon is one of today's most prolific African-American contemporary artists. Like
many artists of his generation, Ligon addresses issues of identity and politics with a
visual vocabulary that draws from icons of late 20th Century art history?per Johns'
text paintings, Richard Serra's monumental black drawings, and Adrian Piper's
conceptual art. Ligon's signature paintings incorporate text written primarily by African-
American literary and cultural figures, using a primarily black and white palate. Stenciled
lettering, drips and built-up surfaces are layered on the canvases with graphic skill and
painterly impulse. Ligon is also known for his photo/text-based work, examining issues
of sexuality and cultural identity, with subjects ranging from Robert Mapplethorpe's
Black Book to the legacy of slavery.

At ArtPace, Ligon has focused on a new body of paintings and drawings with text
from James Baldwin's "Stranger in the Village," an essay written in 1953 that explores
the complexity of establishing an identity when one is seen as a stranger and an outsider.
The paintings are black on black, with text coated with coal dust, a medium that engages
with the sparkle of its abrasive surface. Two large paintings and three smaller ones
occupy the gallery, along with two drawings. The artist has also produced a body of work
from a public action, in which he fabricated "historic" plaques of his own writing, which
describe encounters with strangers in downtown San Antonio. The plaques were installed
at the sites of the encounters and left there until they were either removed or vandalized.
Photographs documenting their placement in urban spaces are paired with duplicate
plaques.

445 North Main Avenue San Antonio TX 78205 t 210 212 4900 f 210 212 4990 www.artpace.org