Jenny Holzer ( born July 29, 1950 in Husick, New York) is an American conceptual artist and artist best known for her series of short aphorisms, Truisms. In her informative art of short lines, Holzer uses the rhetoric and vocabulary of modern information systems and addresses the hidden politics of these systems. Her innovative approach to language as a medium of content and her use of non-traditional media and social media as vehicles for this content make her one of the most interesting and important artists.
Holzer’s works alternate reality and fiction, public and private, universal and private, and offer a poignant social and psychological portrait of our time. PROTECT PROTECT focuses on Holzer’s work in the 1990s and is the largest artist exhibition in the United States in over fifteen years. A cross section of these objects is included in Holzers’ new installation spanning the artist’s practice.
Holzer’s large-scale installations include billboards, projections on buildings and other architectural structures and backlit electronic displays. His varied practice includes a wide variety of media – including street posters, painted signs, stone benches, paintings, photos, sounds, videos, projections, the Internet, Willie’s T-shirts.
Holzer’s main themes are violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, the power of war and death; the artist highlights and sheds light on important issues of capitalist society, skillfully commenting on sexual identity, gender relations and various political and existential issues. Her work addresses many contemporary issues such as the AIDS epidemic, the role of women in society and the threat of nuclear disaster.
Since the late 1970s, he has worked mainly with words that often appear on street and public building signs, billboards, t-shirts, shopping bags and more. In Holzer’s large-scale shows held in more than 40 cities in 20 countries, translucent lettering is sent through landscapes and architecture, creating a kind of ephemeral graffiti that links his first street practice to his longstanding interactions with media and technicians.
His work at MASS MoCA included the project For North Adams for the River Street side of the manufacturing complex (Summer 2017) and the arrangement of 21 carved stone benches on the 16-acre MASS campus of. Mocha. His choice for the Biennale was controversial, especially among more traditionalist male critics who considered his writing mundane and his involvement in media technology and technology was not art.
After 1976, he began working on innovative projects that combine the use of language, installation and public art. This groundbreaking series consists of provocative one-line aphorisms printed in bold italics which show an unsettling element of truth in every proclamation, since men are not monogamous in nature and money creates taste. While attending graduate school at Rhode Island School of Design he painted abstract paintings and experimenting with conceptual design.
She entered Duke University with a liberal arts program and her interest returned in art. After two years at Duke, he entered the University of Chicago for a year and completed his studies at Ohio University after graduating from high school in Ohio and Florida, she entered the liberal arts program of Duke University in 1968 and then attended the University of Chicago from 1970 to 1971. She enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design Fine Arts program in 1975.
Some critics praised Holtzers’ lament as one of his finest works, demonstrating technology, the power of words and the influence of a gallery on art. His work was exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art in London and the Pompidou Center in Paris, as well as many other important venues. She was the first woman to represent the United States at the 1990 Venice Biennale.
Modern computer systems became an important part of Holzers’ work in 1982, when the artist installed his first large electronic sign in the Times Square in New York, his subsequent series Survival, written in 1983-85, spoke of the great pain, pleasure and ridicule of life in modern society. In 1989, his installation at the Guggenheim Museum featured a 163 meter long sign that formed a continuous circle up the parapet.
On Twitter, Holzer’s various bots tweet his maxims which read as though they were anticipating Wednesday. Last fall – where Holzer does not use social media – We Are Not Surprised permitted his “Truism” abuse of power to use SURPRISE in an open letter signed by 9,500 non-male artists, writers and curators denouncing sexism ingrained in the art world.
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