Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints. Though simple, each contains a nested stack of historical and self-referential quotations. Both black-and-white prints depict a version of Ligon’s 1988 painting, Untitled (I Am A Man) , which declares the words of the parenthetical in blocky black letters. Ligon’s painting, of course, is itself a reappropriation and, in some ways, a reproduction. Based on the simple, declarative protest signs carried by sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Ligon’s painting recontextualized this now-iconic object as a work of art. While the print on the left of Condition Report directly mirrors Ligon’s 1988 painting, the print on the right of the pair includes marks, scribbles, and hand-written notations around the edges and borders of the image. These additions to the work are the condition report notes of the title, and refer back to the 1988 original—though this time not as it existed as a symbol of a historical event, but as it exists in the present as a rarified art object. Tracing a simple phrase—I AM A MAN—through these iterations as declaration, symbol, object, and surface, Ligon levies questions of representation and race, commodification and history, and the value and preciousness of one’s identity.
American artist Glenn Ligon is well known for his conceptually based works in paint, neon, photography, sculpture, and video. He draws upon American history, literature, and other sources to create works centered on the black American experience. Ligon filters through cultural sources to create compositions that highlight social inequalities, commemorate struggles, and point fingers at hypocrisy. Rendered in neon, through paint, and in other media, Ligon often draws out the words of others—be they the sanitation workers who protested in Memphis, Tennessee, with signs declaring I AM A MAN; or the controversial and confrontational Richard Pryor, whose jokes become electric letters on Ligon’s canvases.
Behind the simplicity and beauty of this untitled photograph of a brilliantly-colored flowerbed by Félix González-Torres are two remarkable stories of love, loss, and resilience...
Matthew Buckingham presents a narrative directly connected with a highly symbolic site in the United States, the Mount Rushmore Memorial*...
The Black Canyon Deep Semantic Image Segments by Trevor Paglen merges traditional American landscape photography (sometimes referred as ‘frontier photography’ for sites located in the American West) with artificial intelligence and other technological advances such as computer vision...
South Africa Righteous Space by Hank Willis Thomas is concerned with history and identity, with the way race and ‘blackness’ has not only been informed but deliberately shaped and constructed by various forces – first through colonialism and slavery, and more recently through mass media and advertising – and reminds us of the financial and economic stakes that have always been involved in representations of race....
The Damaged series by Lisa Oppenheim takes a series of selected photographs from the Chicago Daily News (1902 – 1933) as its source material...
South Africa Righteous Space by Hank Willis Thomas is concerned with history and identity, with the way race and ‘blackness’ has not only been informed but deliberately shaped and constructed by various forces – first through colonialism and slavery, and more recently through mass media and advertising – and reminds us of the financial and economic stakes that have always been involved in representations of race....
For I use to eat lemon meringue pie till I overloaded on my pancreas with sugar and passed out; It seemed to be a natural response to a society of abundance (1978), also known as the Bodybuilder series, Martinez asked male bodybuilding competitors to pose in whatever position felt “most natural.” They are obviously trained in presenting their ambitiously carved physiques, but their facial expressions seem comparatively unstudied...
Arthur Tress Sought the Shadow Side of Photography Skip to content Arthur Tress, "Boy with Root Hands, New York, New York" from the series The Dream Collector (1971) (all photos Ksenya Gurshtein/ Hyperallergic ) LOS ANGELES — The earliest recorded evidence of humans’ fascination with dreams dates to antiquity, when Heraclitus wrote, “When men dream, each has his own world...
Sandi Tan’s "Shirkers": Moving Backwards in Order to Move Forwards | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles December 19, 2018 By Ke Weiliang (1180 words, six-minute read) NB: It is important to differentiate between the two versions of Shirkers that were filmed...
In her work, Maids Room (2012) which is part of a series, Daniela Ortiz undertakes an architectural analysis of the houses belonging to the upper class of Lima...
Forest Gathering N.2 is part of the series of photographs Beneath the Roses (2003-2005) where anonymous townscapes, forest clearings and broad, desolate streets are revealed as sites of mystery and wonder; similarly, ostensibly banal interiors become the staging grounds for strange human scenarios...
In Jackass (2008) by Ari Marcopoulos, his two sons, Cairo and Ethan, are pictured relaxing in a disheveled bedroom in their Sonoma home...
Untitled is a black-and-white photograph of a wave just before it breaks as seen from the distance of an overlook...
Welling employs simple materials like crumpled aluminum foil, wrinkled fabric and pastry dough and directly exposes them as photograms, playing with the image in the process of revealing it...
Behind the simplicity and beauty of this untitled photograph of a brilliantly-colored flowerbed by Félix González-Torres are two remarkable stories of love, loss, and resilience...
In her masterpiece 8 Possible Beginnings or The Creation of African-America , Walker unravels just that, the story of struggle, oppression, escape and the complexities of power dynamics in the history following slave trade in America...
Brent Sikkema, the Manhattan art dealer renowned for representing artists such as Jeffrey Gibson and Kara Walker found dead The post Brent Sikkema – Visionary Art Dealer Of Jeffrey Gibson And Kara Walker Murdered appeared first on Artlyst ....
In Linda, Lee & Dorsey, Louis (1988~, 2018) Marcel Pardo Ariza draws on Bay Area queer histories that have been uncovered from local archives and queer organizations, and connects them to people currently living in the Bay, where Ariza is also based...
Protester charged for defacing African American Civil War memorial at US National Gallery of Art Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Museums & Heritage news Protester charged for defacing African American Civil War memorial at US National Gallery of Art A climate activist with the group Declare Emergency has been taken into custody over a paint-smearing incident at the museum last year Torey Akers 9 February 2024 Share Declare Emergency affiliate Jackson Green during a protest at the National Gallery of Art on 14 November 2023 Courtesy Declare Emergency Jackson Green, an activist from Utah, has been arrested and charged with defacing a memorial to Black Civil War soldier at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, DC last autumn...