Jenny Holzer

For the Scandinavian

LED sign with blue, green & red diodes

640.1 x 12.7 x 12.7 cm

Executed in 2019

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

The work of American artist Jenny Holzer (born 1950) centres on the impact of language in public space. Throughout her career, Holzer has presented acerbic and powerful statements about society – carved into stone benches; pasted on posters across New York City; and programmed into glittering LED signs. Through language, Holzer brings to light topics that are usually silenced or ignored, in a way that is simultaneously raw and poetic.

 

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Holzer has employed electronic signs since 1982 when she displayed her text on a billboard in Times Square in New York City. LEDs are typically used to circulate news, information or advertisements, but Holzers subverts the electronic noise that populates our daily lives by rendering it personal and political.

 

The text displayed on this LED work is programmed to run in cycles of 1 year. During Year 1, it will display text from Holzer’s Living series (1980–82), in which she presents a set of quiet observations, directions and warnings, written in a matter of fact, diaristic or journalistic style suited to descriptions of everyday life.

Year 2 will feature Holzer’s Survival texts (1983–85), a cautionary series whose sentences instruct and inform in a tone more urgent that that of Living. Survival was the first of Holzer’s text series to be written especially for electronic signs.

Year 3 will present Holzer’s now-iconic Truisms series, comprising over 250 single-sentence declarations. The Truisms examine the social construction of beliefs and mores. Arranged in alphabetical order, they were first shown on anonymous street posters pasted throughout downtown Manhattan.

Year 4 will showcase Arno (1996), which began as an account of losing someone to AIDS before expanding to become a more general meditation on living with loss after a great and terrible love.

Year 5 will combine all four text series, with a total runtime 38 hours, with sections randomly sequenced — so actual runtime is effectively “infinite”.