Untitled (America)/Debris Field/Synecdoche/Notes for a Poem on the Third World, is an exhibition of new work by Glenn Ligon now on view at Regen Projects. For this exhibition, Ligon will present a new series of silkscreen paintings based on abstracted letter forms and several neon installations. Glenn Ligon’s wide-ranging multimedia art practice encompasses painting, neon, photography, sculpture, print, installation, and video. His work explores issues of history, language, and cultural identity.
Over the years, Ligon has created neon sculptures that illuminate various phrases or words in charged and animated ways. Notes for a Poem on the Third World, Ligon’s first figurative sculpture, is comprised of a large neon based on a tracing of the artist's hands that takes its inspiration from an unrealized film project by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini claimed that it was the "discovery of the elsewhere" that drove his identification with the struggles of non-Western peoples and people on the margins of the West. Ligon's neon, with its ambiguous gesture of greeting, protest, or surrender, is the first of a series of works inspired by Pasolini’s project."Untitled (America)/Debris Field/Synecdoche/Notes for a Poem on the Third World " will be on view @ Regen Projects 6750 Santa Monica Blvd until February 17. photographs by Oliver Kupper.