Current Exhibition

Glenn Ligon

New York May 21st to July 19th, 2025

  • Installation view at The Brant Foundation New York Untitled (Bruise/Blues), 2014
  • With Hope, 2017
  • Installation view Live, 2014

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PRESS RELEASE: The Brant Foundation Art Study Center is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by American artist Glenn Ligon. Glenn Ligon features video, neon installations, and paintings by the artist, whose practice reconsiders American history through engagements with the written word. Opening to the public on May 21st, the exhibition will be on view throughout the foundation’s East Village space.

“We are honored to present a selection of Glenn Ligon’s works, many of which were also shown in Camden Art Centre’s 2014 exhibition Call and Response,” said The Brant Foundation’s founder, Peter M. Brant. “Ligon has been one of the most impactful and influential artists over multiple generations. His work deals with sensitive political and racial issues that transform our history into the current reality while delivering a beautiful, minimal yet abstract aesthetic characteristic of his distinct personal style.”

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Glenn Ligon (American, b. 1960) has pursued a deep confrontation with American culture throughout his career. Drawing from a variety of sources—the texts of literary greats James Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Pryor’s stand-up comedy, and Steve Reich’s minimalist musical compositions, to name a few—Ligon’s work addresses the failures of representation in the American zeitgeist. He brings important cultural moments and artifacts into a broader, contemporary context. For instance, in Untitled (Bruise/Blues), Ligon draws from the recorded testimony of Daniel Hamm, one of six Black teenagers wrongfully incarcerated during the Harlem riots of 1964. The works take as their point of departure Hamm’s description of the police beatings he endured, even incorporating Hamm’s slip of tongue (bruise vs. blues) in Ligon’s sculptural neon reproduction. 

Through multiple works, Ligon demonstrates how a legacy of representation complicates and confounds constructions of race, masculinity, identity and the nation itself. On the Foundation’s second floor, viewers encounter Ligon’s Rückenfigur (2009). The neon installation takes its name from the German art historical term Rückenfigur, which describes landscape painting that includes a figure seen from behind. The word “AMERICA” is illuminated in neon, yet something is off; a closer look reveals the text is facing away from the viewer and into the wall. This directional exclusion seems to remove the viewer from the artwork. In doing so, Rückenfigur suggests a culture and nation that has literally turned its back on its viewers.

About Glenn Ligon
Glenn Ligon received a bachelor of arts from Wesleyan University and attended the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2011, the Whitney held a mid-career retrospective, Glenn Ligon: AMERICA, organized by Scott Rothkopf, that traveled nationally. Ligon’s work has been shown in major international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (2015, 1997), Berlin Biennale (2014), Istanbul Biennial (2019, 2011), and Documenta 11 (2002). His solo exhibition and curatorial project All Over the Place recently concluded at the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge, England.

 

  • With Hope, 2017

With Hope, 2017

With Hope is a poignant neon sculpture that encapsulates the artist’s exploration of language, identity, and the complexities of American culture.

The phrase “With Hope” was an inscription by author Bryan Stevenson, signed in a copy of his book “With Mercy,” when Glenn Ligon met him at an event. The book was Bryan Stevenson’s best-selling memoir of his work appealing wrongful convictions. The font of the neon words in this piece is Bryan’s handwriting. 

Glenn Ligon’s work engages with the state of the world and urges us to do the same, not by offering answers but by posing thought-provoking questions(1). The phrase “With Hope” can be read both as an affirmation and a query, capturing the enduring tension between optimism and uncertainty that defines much of contemporary American experience(2).

 1. Jones, Kellie. “Stopping By with Glenn Ligon.” Poetry Society of America, www.poetrysociety.org/poems-essays/stopping-by-with-glenn-ligon.

2.  Hauser & Wirth Is Proud to Now Represent Celebrated American Artist Glenn Ligon.” Hauser & Wirth, 20 Feb. 2019, https://www.hauserwirth.com/news/24242-hauser-wirth-proud-now-represent-celebrated-american-artist-glenn-ligon/

Installation view at The Brant Foundation New York

Artwork © Glenn Ligon
Photography: Sean Keenan

Live, 2014

Live (2014) is a silent seven-channel video installation based on the 1982 film Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip.  Pryor is famous for his darkly humorous and often explicit critiques of society, and Ligon has previously incorporated his standup material in a series of colorful text paintings.  In Live, Ligon removes Pryor’s voice, and thereby, the incisive comedy for which he is best known.  One channel depicts Pryor in full, while the other six channels each focus on a specific part of his body – his hands, head, mouth, groin, and shadow – to concentrate our attention on his animated delivery and emphatic body language.  Each screen is illuminated only when that particular part of the body is visible in the original film, thus, the screens flicker off and on intermittently, prompting the viewer to walk around them to take in the whole installation.

This emphasis on the body invariably raises questions regarding social constructs of race and masculinity.  Much of Ligon’s practice explores the limits of language, particularly as it relates to history and identity. Live continues in this vein by eliminating language to consider how meaning is conveyed through the body, as well as conferred upon it(1).

1. Luhring Augustine press release, We Need To Wake Up Cause That’s What Time It Is, 2016.  https://www.luhringaugustine.com/exhibitions/glenn-ligon.

  • Installation view at The Brant Foundation New York Untitled (Bruise/Blues), 2014
  • Installation view at The Brant Foundation New York Untitled (Bruise/Blues), 2014
  • Installation view at The Brant Foundation New York Untitled (Bruise/Blues), 2014

Untitled (Bruise/Blues), 2014

This neon installation features the words ‘bruise’ and ‘blues,’ which alternate in illumination following the rhythmic structure of Steve Reich’s 1966 Minimalist composition ‘Come Out,’ translating auditory patterns into visual form. In 1964, following the Little Fruit Stand Riot in Harlem, six Black teenagers, including a young man named Daniel Hamm, were falsely accused and prosecuted for the murder of Margit Sugar. The media came to refer to them as the “Harlem Six” and Reich created his piece for a fundraising benefit for their retrial. 

Reich’s taped-speech looped Daniel Hamm’s voice saying, “I had to, like, open the bruise up and let some of the blues blood come out to show them.” Daniel Hamm’s quote comes from his testimony, where he referenced the moment he had to puncture a bruise on his own body to receive medical aid after being beaten by police officers during the Little Fruit Stand Riot. 

Hamm’s slip of saying “blues” instead of “bruise” connects physical injury to emotional suffering. Ligon’s use of electric blue neon, reminiscent of New York police car lettering, underscores the piece’s commentary on police brutality and the African American experience.(1)

 Ratner, Megan. “File Note 91: Glenn Ligon.” Camden Art Centre, Glenn Ligon Patrons Circle, 10 Oct. 2014.  https://camdenartcentre.org/file-notes/file-note-91-glenn-ligon?utm