Glenn Ligon: Sit So Your Back Isn’t Against the Door

On view together for the first time in over 25 years this fall at our Downtown Los Angeles gallery, Glenn Ligon’s Coloring Book paintings reveal a rarely seen facet of the artist’s practice. Conceived during a 1999 – 2000 residency at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the series began when Ligon invited children to color pages from Afrocentric coloring books of the late 1960s and early 1970s before translating their uninhibited markings into large-scale paintings. Alongside the Coloring Book paintings, the exhibition will debut Ligon’s ‘Black Panther Coloring Book #1,’ a new 22-part work based on a political primer for adults illustrated in 1969 by artist Akinsanya Kambon. Together, the works unfold into a rich meditation on history, authorship and the shifting nature of meaning.