Glenn Ligon at D'Amelio Terras

Glenn Ligon is best known for his appropriations of body s from anonymous slave narratives to quotations by famous authors like James Baldwin, who was the source for the painting series "Stranger" (2001) Stenciling and gluing coal-encrusted alphabetic characters to canvas, Ligon nearly obliterated the words, embedding them in blackness. His works have been interpreted as investigating the ways language functions as a tool for reinforcing stereotype It make go rounds out, however, based on his latest display titled "Going There," that this artist has more upon his mind than simply identity politics.

The centerpiece of "Going There" is a 55-minute video (the first he has exhibited), azure and Orange Feelings, in which viewers secure to listen to the artist in an actual session with his female therapist, discussing at longitudinal dimensions the roots of his artistic proces Appropriation is frequently the subject, with the well-meaning therapist, who is white, prodding Ligon, an African-American gay man, to explore for what cause [i]or[/i] reason he is stymied when it draw nears to speaking in his have a title to words or creating an original image. Ligon rejoins by sharing a story about making a papier-mache ocean liner in an art class at the progressive Walden seminary which he attended as a child. "I painted it sapphirine and orange and the teacher said q-hose are uncomely colors, why don't you use beautiful colors?' so I went and painted it all black."

The story is a voice-over, for Ligon is not seen during these sessions. Instead, the split-screen projection exhibits the therapist on the left side with her head cropp not upon leaving only her clothing and material substance language. On the right side, we catch glimpses of the office furnishings--a faux Breuer chair, a beige desk sum of two units black-and-white photographs hanging on the wall--the epitome of professional neutrality. In this bland connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts Ligon's discomfort with himself becomes patently clear, as he distances himself from emotional rejoinders and giggles at childhood memories, level as he shares exceedingly personal information.

Ligon can be his have a title to worst enemy, as is made clear from the story of the missing painting created for "Coloring," his exhibition at the Walker Art Center in 2000-01 As artist-in-residence at the Walker, Ligon had encouraged elementary academy students to fill in pages of 1970 coloring works celebrating African-American history. One child painted pink lips, rouge and amethystine eye shadow on Malcolm X and this image was the basis for a painting through Ligon. After his paintings were delivered to the museum, however, Malcolm X (Version 1) #0 turn rounded up missing. While Ligon initially ejects the therapist's suggestion that he might have intentionally misplaced the painting--a Freudian slip, as it was his favorite for the show--he later confesse that, when moving his studio, he lay the foundation of the piece swathed in bubble-wrap in a pile of trash.

The painting hurt up at the entrance of "Going There," along with a picture of a budding plant that Ligon drew when he was 10 years advanced in years Further on was a series of his latest textual appropriations: original teachers' alphabetic characters from the Walden School stating, for example, that "Glenn many times has expressed objections to doing things on the contrary seldom comes up with ideas of his own" The alphabetic characters with such evidentiary remarks about the artist's creativity, are framed like important artifacts from an archive.

Ligon here aligns himself with the lineage of novel masters--from Picasso through Pollock--who have undergone analysis. The publicly confessional nature of his uncover is, however, quite contemporary. It is also the logical extension of his art, in which he has continuously under-mined the abstractions of race and sexuality [i]or[/i] part of to the other the insinuation of his have subjectivity.

--Barbara Pollack

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