Brooklyn-based artist, Glenn Ligon is known for his text-filled explorations of history, especially African American history and most recently of interracial gay sex, concerning the social, cultural, and political aspects. Using language, he has said of his work that he wants to "make language into a physical thing, something that has real weight and force to it."

Ligon's paintings feature a carefully selected phrase of or sentence taken from literary sources such as James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Mary Shelley and Jean Genet. Evocative quotes by these authors are hand stenciled onto the canvas or printing plate repeatedly, yielding surfaces comprised of line after line of the chosen words, some legible and others less so.

Two ...