Whitney Biennial compare/contrast

Untitled (I Do Not Always Feel Colored)
Glenn Ligon
Oil Sticks on primed surface door
80"x 15"x 1 1/2"





















Remember With Membry
Trenton Doyle Hancock
Acrylic plastic and Canvas
56"x66"


Both Pieces of work are word based art. The palette is similar with the addition of blue in Hancock's work. While Ligon's Untitled piece is set up in rows of text that get progressivley harder to read the text as the stencil built up residue toward the bottom. In Remember With Membry the text also has a way of becoming illegible but only as the text becomes smaller and twisted within the work. This is aided by the cutout portions and layers of text within to the piece. While Ligon uses only text Hancock combines his with visual elements. Both pieces replicate a phrase in their piece. There is also a story line behind each piece that gives it character. Ligon's Untitled tells about how she didn't see herself as black until she was sent to a school outside her tightly knit community of Eatonville, FL. This realistic background is quite different from Remember With Membry where Hancock depicts a world based more on personal mythology. Ligon looks back on the process of what has happened and Hancock depicts the result of a battle of his mythological creatures. While Ligon's work is slightly taller then Hancock's, the width of Hancock's piece seems to be about four times that of Ligon's. The materials used in each work shows Untitled more as a declaration of self and Remember With Membry a warning flag or relic from the past.