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Late at night, early in the morning, at noon
late at night, early in the morning, at noon explores the intersection of language, color, and perception through Glenn Ligon’s works on paper. On view at Hauser & Wirth, 18th Street, New York, from 15 January to 11 April 2026, the exhibition brings together new works alongside prints from the past three decades, tracing the evolution of Ligon’s printmaking practice.
late at night, early in the morning, at noon is a two-part exhibition of new and historic works on paper by Glenn Ligon, presented by Hauser & Wirth at 18th Street, New York. The exhibition runs from 15 January through 11 April 2026. The presentation extends Ligon’s longstanding engagement with language and abstraction, centering on the color blue and its emotional, historical, and cultural resonance, in dialogue with the writings of James Baldwin.
Exhibition Description
late at night, early in the morning, at noon is conceived as a two-part presentation that examines how language dissolves into atmosphere and sensation through color and material process. The exhibition’s title is drawn from James Baldwin’s 1964 introduction to a Beauford Delaney exhibition in Paris, in which Baldwin reflects on light filtered through leaves and describes blue as a condition of perception—“as blue as the blues when the last light of sun departed.” For Ligon, this description becomes a conceptual framework for thinking about how color and language merge to form a kind of figuration. In the front gallery at 18th Street, Ligon presents Blue (for JB), a new series of large-scale works on paper that build on ideas first explored in his Stranger paintings, which drew text from Baldwin’s 1953 essay Stranger in the Village. For this new body of work, Ligon begins with rubbings made on thin sheets of Japanese kozo paper placed atop earlier studies. These rubbings capture fragments of words and shapes, recording moments where text and image converge. Ligon enlarges the rubbings as silkscreens on blue grounds and applies water to the surface, allowing ink to flow and blur. The resulting compositions oscillate between legibility and abstraction, transforming Baldwin’s words into atmospheric fields of light, mood, and emotion.
