jenny holzer

The work of jenny holzer has been shown worldwide in prominent institutions such as the guggenheim museum (new york), the american pavilion at the venice biennale (venice, italy), the institute of contemporary art london (london, england) or the centre pompidou (paris, france). however, the main focus of jenny holzer has been on the investigation of means to disseminate her ideas within public space. since the late seventies, she has been working in the street and in public buildings, using media that would enable her work to blend in the landscape. from lcd displays (e.g., in times square, new york) to posters and stickers (applied to such urban elements as telephone booths or parking meters), the texts function as comments on that environment they fit into, stimulating awareness of our social conditioning as conveyed by the very landscape in which we may be confronted by them. jenny holzer is famous for her short statements, formally
called ‘truisms’. some are common myths while others
are just phrases on random subjects in the form of slogans.
the sayings include:

‘a man can't know what it's like to be a mother’,

‘men are not monogamous by nature’,

‘money creates taste’,

‘a lot of professionals are crackpots’,

‘enjoy yourself because you can't change anything anyway’,

‘freedom is a luxury not a necessity’,

‘don't place too much trust in experts’.


Her medium, whether formulated as a t-shirt, as a plaque,
or as an LED sign, always is writing,
and the public dimension is integral to the delivery of her work.
starting in the late 1970s with the posters that jenny holzer
pasted on buildings in new york city, and up to her recent
xenon projections on landscape and architecture,
her practice has rivaled ignorance and violence with humor,
kindness, and moral courage.


Often holzer's work presents both explicit content and
minimalist aesthetics that make profound statements about
the world of advertising and consumer society today.
by presenting an assemblage of phrases that mimic advertising
slogans through vehicles commonly used in advertising,
such as electric billboards, coffee mugs, and commercials
on cable and network television, holzer questions what
our eyes can see and what we can't see in media,
whether consumers today have any real control over the
information that is provided to them.

Going back to her years as a painter at the rhode island
school of design, holzer says she was influenced by the
‘clean, simple variations’ of minimalist aesthetics in artists
like donald judd, mark rothko and morris louis.

In her seoul exhibit, the artist has carefully arranged the
atmosphere of the gallery display so that viewers
‘won't feel as if they are in las vegas’
as they enter the room installed with electronic screens.
the meditative character of her art comes through with
the installation of two sandstone benches carved with
the artist's writings, which exist both as chairs and as
art pieces by themselves.
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jenny holzer
was born 1950 in gallipolis, ohio, usa.
she received a BFA in painting and printmaking from ohio
university in 1972 and an MFA in painting from the RISD /
rhode island school of design in 1975.
holzer began to use text in her work while attending
ohio university. an abstract painter while at RISD,
she shifted to public projects and works that were
‘sublime and impressive’.
jenny holzer moved to new york city in 1976 and
enrolled in the whitney museum independent study program,
there she created the first ‘truisms’, in a first stage as a
series of one-liners on posters pasted anonymously around
the city. later she did installations with electronic LED displays
that are attentive to architecture, monuments and memorials;
and since 1996, large-scale xenon projections of text
on buildings and landscape. she has realized these xenon
projections in florence, rome, venice, rio de janeiro, buenos aires,
oslo, paris, bordeaux, berlin, washington, new york city and miami.
holzer received the leone d’oro for her american pavilion
installation at the 1990 venice biennale, was the recipient of the
2002 kaiserring from the city of goslar, germany,
and was awarded the public art network annual award by
americans for the arts in 2004.
she lives and works in hoosick, new york.