Jenny Holzer is an American artist famous for her use of pure text artwork. Her practice has been going since 1977 when she first began using text in a series that continues to influence her work today called Truisms. Truisms is a List of sayings creates by Holzer. These short punchy lines are brief comments on the world that are put together to evoke thought from both sides of the argument. The audience must come to their own conclusions about what to choose to believe and what not to believe.
“I think they are a representative sampling of opinion. I didn’t want to make a didactic or dogmatic piece. . . I wanted to highlight those thoughts and topics that polarize people, but not choose sides. I was trying to present a fairly accurate survey and not have it break down into left, right, center, or religious versus anarchist, or what have you.” Jenny Holzer.
to begin with truisms were pasted on public areas such as bus stops and telephone booths. Until Holzer became more established and began to post her work on LED billboards. Giving her work a larger public audience.
Holzer work Lustmord 1993-94. Was influenced by the violence against Muslim woman by Serbian soldiers in Bosnia. Holzer utilizes an anonymous voice to send her message across and makes no direct stance instead hoping that without a figure head the audience will come to the correct conclusion about the information they are given. Three voices are allowed to speak, The victim of rape, the perpetrator and an observer. The words of all three people is played around the room in no particular order. It is here that the audience is faced with the pure, uncensored reality.
Holzer’s Public work is taken to new levels with her Projections series an ongoing project that has been going around the world since its conception in 1996. In this work Holzer Projects phrases onto the side of public buildings such as gallery’s and churches often political in nature these phrases engulf the building turning it into a symbol of consideration for thought. Holzer’s name is again absent from the work and the anonymous truth spoken by the building takes on an authority of its own.
References
-John Minkowsky, “jenny holzer,avant garde shows Massachusetts”, Art house journal. 2008.p71
-Art & today, Elenor heartly "Art and Politics : the rhetoric of dissent"Phaidon press 2008. 366-389
-http://www.jennyholzer.com/
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