Excessive Line Artwork Has Commissioned Glenn Ligon for 18th Avenue Billboard

New York’s Excessive Line Artwork, the artwork commissioning platform of the beloved railroad turned pedestrian walkway, is as soon as once more getting a devoted billboard. 

After almost a decade hiatus, the group will as soon as once more current artworks on 18th Avenue, close to tenth Avenue, in Chelsea. A newly reconstructed billboard there’ll reinvigorate its Billboard Artwork collection, which locations artworks seen from each avenue degree and the elevated park. The 18th Avenue billboard will rotate each two months.

For the inaugural iteration, Excessive Line Artwork director and chief curator Cecilia Alemani has tapped conceptual artist Glenn Ligon, who is thought for an incisive, text-based follow that ponders America’s previous and its potentialities. Ligon’s Untitled (America/Me), a reworked {photograph} of one in all his iconic neon works, shall be on view from September 3 by means of November 2024 at 18th Avenue close to tenth Avenue. 

“We’re very excited to have the platform of the billboard at 18th Avenue once more after almost a decade,” Alemani stated in an announcement. “The billboard format permits the Excessive Line Artwork program to current massive, extremely seen two-dimensional artworks in a extra responsive timeframe than different installations.”

She continued, “It’s a large canvas for artists to current massive scale works seen each from the Excessive Line and from the road degree. The reducing message of [Untitled (America/Me)] finds renewed resonance within the present political second.” 

The earlier iteration of Excessive Line Artwork’s billboard fee ran from 2010 by means of 2015, and exhibited works by John Baldessari, Religion Ringgold, and Louise Lawler, amongst different artists. Since September 2023, the group has additionally staged billboard fee on one such construction on Dyer Avenue between thirtieth and thirty first Streets, not removed from the Excessive Line.

Ligon’s Untitled (America/Me), too, is a brand new iteration of an outdated concept. He reworked his iconic 2008 neon Untitled, which initially stretched some 14 ft throughout, and featured the phrase “AMERICA” in flickering neon letters—a nod to the cautious optimism of the primary Obama administration. The Excessive Line piece is much more vital of the connection between a person and nation: thick black X’s have been drawn over virtually each letter of “America”—leaving solely the ‘M’ and ‘E’ seen.

In an announcement, Ligon mirrored on his work: “Paint is a fabric. Language is a fabric. Neon is a fabric. I’m curious about enjoying with that phrase [“America”] as materials. So to cross it out, to invert it, to place it the wrong way up or to make it blink on and off obnoxiously is all a manner of enjoying with this phrase that we predict everyone knows what it means.”