jenny holzer is famous for her short statements, formally called ‘truisms’...........................................................................................................................
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until january 23, 2005 kukje gallery, seoul, korea http://www.kukjegallery.com --- 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. --- 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. --- the kukje gallery has been at the forefront in representing the most current and significant tendencies in korean and international contemporary art. it opened in 1982. --- the book jenny holzer ‘die macht des wortes / the power of words’ xenon for duisburg. 33 images, text german / english, with dvd video available in march 2005 published by hatje cantz --- ------- monthly designboom newsletter ------- ------- ? comments and contact us ? -------	LED 1 © jenny holzer ‘blue tilt’, 2004 © jenny holzer xenon on bregenz’ alte pfarrkirche zum heiligen nikolaus, lech, 2004 © jenny holzer xenon in venice (writing on walls by night) , 2003 © jenny holzer xenon on berlin’s matthäikirche, 2001 © jenny holzer xenon on baltic centre for contemporary art, gateshead, england, 2000 © jenny holzer