October 16: Glenn Ligon—Distinguishing Piss from Rain
Presented by 192 Books, Glenn Ligon in conversation with James Hoff to discuss his new book Distinguishing Piss from Rain (Hauser & Wirth, 2024)
This event will take place in person at 192 Books at 192 10th Ave on Wednesday, October 16th at 6:30 PM ET. Seating is limited. RSVP for free here. The discussion will also be streamed directly on this page. There is no login required. A recording will be archived.
Books will be available for sale after the conversation.
Glenn Ligon—Distinguishing Piss from Rain: Writings and Interviews (Hauser & Wirth, 2024)
This long-awaited and essential publication collects three decades of writings and interviews by Glenn Ligon, whose work has been delivering an incisive examination of race, history, sexuality, and culture in America since his emergence as an artist in the late 1980s. No stranger to text, Ligon has routinely used writings from James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Gertrude Stein, Richard Pryor, and others to construct work that centers Blackness within the historically white backdrop of the art world and culture writ large. He began writing in the early 2000s, engaging deeply with the work of peers such as Julie Mehretu, Chris Ofili, and Lorna Simpson, as well as artists that came before him—among them Philip Guston, David Hammons, and Andy Warhol. Throughout the publication’s sixteen essays, Ligon combines razor-sharp insight with anecdotal and biographical details, providing the fullest picture yet of the artist and his ongoing evaluation of the art and politics of our time.
Photo by Paul Mpagi Sepuya
Glenn Ligon (b. 1960) is an artist living and working in New York. Throughout his career, Ligon has pursued an incisive exploration of American history, literature, and society across bodies of work that build critically on the legacies of modern painting and conceptual art. Important solo exhibitions include Post-Noir, Call and Response, and Some Changes. Select curatorial projects include Grief and Grievance, Blue Black, and Encounters and Collisions. Ligon’s work has been shown in major international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (2015, 1997), Berlin Biennial (2014), Istanbul Biennial (2019, 2011), and Documenta XI (2002). His solo exhibition and curatorial project Glenn Ligon: All Over the Place is currently on view at The Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge through March 2025.
James Hoff is an artist living in New York City. He is the co-founder and executive editor at Primary Information, a non-profit arts organization founded in 2006 to publish artists’ books and artists’ writings. Primary Information facilitates intergenerational dialogue through the simultaneous publication of new and archival books, providing a new audience for out-of-print works and historical context for contemporary artists. Since its founding, the organization has published over 150 publications.