Jenny Holzer

GD 102

Westwood College

Mendoza

Jenny Holzer • American Conceptual Artist • Born 1950 in Gallipolis, Ohio

• She attended Ohio University, Rhode Island School of Design, and the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art

• 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 Holzer pasted on buildings in new york city, and up to her recent projections on landscape and architecture, her practice has rivaled ignorance and violence with humor, kindness, and moral courage.

Early Work

Main focus of her work is the use of words and ideas in public space

Whether questioning consumerist impulses, describing torture, or lamenting death and disease, Jenny Holzer’s use of language provokes a response in the

viewer. While her subversive work often blends in among advertisements in public space, its arresting content violates expectations.

Originally utilizing street posters, LED signs became her most visible medium, though her diverse practice incorporates a wide array of media including bronze

plaques, painted signs, stone benches and footstools, stickers, T-shirts, paintings, photographs, sound, video, light projection and the Internet

Mature Work

Holzer wrote texts herself between 1977 and 2001. Since 1993, she has been mainly working with texts written by others

Literary texts by great authors such as the Polish Nobel Wislawa Szymborska, Henri Cole (USA), Elfriede Jelinek (Austria), Fadhil Al-Azawi (Iraq), Yehuda Amichai (Israel) and Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine)

Holzer's works often speak of violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, power, war and death. Her main concern is to enlighten, bringing to light something

thought in silence and was meant to remain hidden.

Holzer's work presents both explicit content andminimalist 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 whatour eyes can see and what we can't see in media,

whether consumers today have any real control over theinformation that is provided to them.