Exhibitions Coloring: New Work By Glenn Ligon: gallery documentation, 10/25/00 2000 Gallery 7 Exhibition walk-through plus Ligon's 'Stranger in the Village # 16 (permanent collection) and I Looked Into the Mirror (Cities Collect). For Coloring: New Work by Glenn Ligon, his first solo exhibition at the Walker, the artist has created new work that draws on an era of continuing personal fascination: 1970s America. It was a time of burgeoning racial consciousness among African Americans, whose new self-awareness reverberated in numerous everyday cultural manifestations. Ligon has chosen images from mass-produced, black-themed coloring books of the early 1970s and reproduced them as large-scale silkscreens on canvas. His use of vibrant colors in these works is a startling change for an artist known mostly for his black-and-white compositions. These works continue Ligon's investigation of language and appropriated images mediated by historical context. In his alphabet series, 'B' invokes 'bee, butterfly, bad (ba-a-d), and brothers.' Similarly, the images range from a pensive Malcolm X and gold-chained Isaac Hayes to a young African girl and a group of children playing basketball. These everyday representations of black life are intricately connected to the Civil Rights and Black Power movements that foreshadowed them and suggest an insertion of black people into the greater American and world history. Also on view in the exhibition are the results of Ligon's collaboration with young children in the Twin Cities area. During the summer of 2000, he made coloring sheets from the appropriated images and joined area children in coloring sessions. He is interested in the ways young children respond to images and words. This collaboration with Twin Cities community members was an unexpected, serendipitous follow-up to his earlier residency, during which Ligon worked with the Walker's Teen Arts Council to produce artworks based on the museum's permanent collection. Ligon is represented by several works in the Walker's permanent collection, including the recently acquired coal-dust painting Untitled (Stranger in the Village #16) (2000). He was included in the 2000 Kwangju Biennial, and has had solo exhibitions at several museums, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
	Archive Details Format: SVHS Generation: dub Length: 00:13:00 Accession Number: 01.v0004b Format: Betacam SP Generation: master Length: 00:13:00 Accession Number: 01.v0004a Director: Walker Art Center Executive producer: Walker Art Center Production company: Walker Art Center Type: Video Copyright: 2000 Walker Art Center Credit Line: Walker Art Center Archives: Sound and Moving Image Collections