New York-born artist Glenn Ligon is best known for his text-based works that explore racial discrimination and sexual identity through language. His work has drawn upon the writings and speeches of diverse figures including Jean Genet, Zora Neale Hurston, Gertrude Stein and Richard Pryor. His practice includes painting, sculpture, video, large-scale commissions such as theatre set designs, and works on paper.

Ligon’s visual language builds on the legacies of American Abstract Expressionists including Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns. His use of text varies; sometimes it is presented literally in neon or stencilled lettering; it can also take on a physicality, mutating into illegible forms. Impossible to ‘read’ clearly, these areas of abstraction – articulated in this etching titled Correspondence – question the viewer’s perception of letters, words and language, whilst exploring the fundamental relationship between black and white. Ligon’s imagery is perfectly suited to the medium of aquatint, which enables him to produce strong, monochromatic images with subtle differences of tone and shade. It is combined here with drypoint (where the artist scratches directly onto the plate) to create harder lines within the composition. 

In 2011 the Whitney Museum of American Art held a mid-career retrospective of Ligon’s work, Glenn Ligon: America. His work has also been exhibited in solo shows at Nottingham Contemporary, Tate Liverpool, Camden Arts Centre, London, the Power Plant in Toronto, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. His work has been included in major international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (2015 and 1997), Berlin Biennal (2014), Istanbul Biennal (2011), Documenta XI (2002), and Gwangju Biennale (2000). He lives and works in New York.