Los Angeles
Beginning 12th March 2009, Jenny Holzer, a leading artist of her generation, is holding a major exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The exhibition titled PROTECT PROTECT, organized jointly by Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, and Foundation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland, will have on display Holzer’s work since the 1990s. Being the most comprehensive and largest exhibition held by Holzer in over 15 years in the U.S., the exhibition is on till 31st May at the Emily Fisher Landau Galleries on the 4th floor at Whitney Museum.
The LED sign is her signature medium and has been used in differing configurations and contexts like simple, horizontal wall mounted edition in early 1980s to the recent sculptural and architectural pieces. Holzer now presents new LED works on display for the first time in the U.S. The exhibition also includes various other architecturally configured LED works using bold colours, sculptural forms, and passages of text interplay. Each is programmed with a set series of texts: from Red Yellow Looming (2004), declassified documents in Thorax (2007), Purple (2008), and to Holzer’s writings in For Chicago (2007), Monument (2008), Green Purple Cross (2008) and Blue Cross (2008). These pieces offer an array of institutional statements and individual narratives, stimulating expression on issues like violence, hope, and vulnerability. The works include Red Yellow Looming (2004), a grouping of horizontal signs that pitch forward above the heads of viewers, and Monument (2008), a vertical sculpture of curving bands of moving text nearly 20 feet in height.
Holzer first exhibited a new range of silk-screened paintings in 2006 incorporating declassified and often redacted texts. Two collections of paintings figure significantly in this exhibition. One is a series based on a U.S. Central Command PowerPoint presentation to the White House outlining line of attack for Iraq war. The paintings reproduce Middle East maps with texts and graphics narrating an assortment of scenarios and possible outcomes of the events. Another noteworthy group of paintings offers images of handprints of American soldiers accused of felony in Iraq, including detainee abuse and assault. The handprints have been redacted to efface individuating marks. Hanging the hands of the charged next to those found to be wrongly accused and those whose culpability has been lost, the artist symbolizes the fog of war.
Sculpture
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Beginning 12th March 2009, Jenny Holzer, a leading artist of her generation, is holding a major exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The exhibition titled PROTECT PROTECT, organized jointly by Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, and Foundation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland, will have on display Holzer’s work since the 1990s. Being the most comprehensive and largest exhibition held by Holzer in over 15 years in the U.S., the exhibition is on till 31st May at the Emily Fisher Landau Galleries on the 4th floor at Whitney Museum.Text and centrality of installation have been effectively used by Holzer in her works to depict the realities of society and emotions. Her unique way of approach to language, use of unconventional media and public settings has won her accolades and bestowed her status of revolutionary artist amongst contemporaries. Her work has been accepted well in both art and non-art world contexts acknowledging her commitment to connect with the public on socially and culturally important issues.
Her work blends form and content in a seamless way and is characterized by conceptual rigor and formal beauty. Holzer’s work illustrates insightful portrayal of the current era through fact and fiction, public and private, particular as well as universal forms.
Presently being exhibited at MCA, Chicago, the show will be on display at Foundation Beyeler, Switzerland after the Whitney presentation. The artist reconfigures the components at each venue based on site specific installation. The installation at Whitney is being supervised by curator David Kiehl who is responsible for prints and collections at Whitney while curator Elizabeth Smith, Chief Curator James W. Alsdorf and Deputy Director (Programs) at MCA oversee the installation at other sites.
The exhibition is much more than a conservative study displaying diverse yet related group of work using an assortment of media that Holzer has been working in recent times. Sculpture, LED technology, and a consortium of government documents in the form of paintings that Holzer could get thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, have been used as medium. She has chosen texts from the official documents and her own work of yesteryears. Her exhibited works bring to fore her continued artistic innovation detailing the hallmark of her practice, pain, love, peace, and survival.
LED Works and Installations
The LED sign is her signature medium and has been used in differing configurations and contexts like simple, horizontal wall mounted edition in early 1980s to the recent sculptural and architectural pieces. Holzer now presents new LED works on display for the first time in the U.S. The exhibition also includes various other architecturally configured LED works using bold colours, sculptural forms, and passages of text interplay. Each is programmed with a set series of texts: from Red Yellow Looming (2004), declassified documents in Thorax (2007), Purple (2008), and to Holzer’s writings in For Chicago (2007), Monument (2008), Green Purple Cross (2008) and Blue Cross (2008). These pieces offer an array of institutional statements and individual narratives, stimulating expression on issues like violence, hope, and vulnerability. The works include Red Yellow Looming (2004), a grouping of horizontal signs that pitch forward above the heads of viewers, and Monument (2008), a vertical sculpture of curving bands of moving text nearly 20 feet in height.
Redaction Paintings
Holzer first exhibited a new range of silk-screened paintings in 2006 incorporating declassified and often redacted texts. Two collections of paintings figure significantly in this exhibition. One is a series based on a U.S. Central Command PowerPoint presentation to the White House outlining line of attack for Iraq war. The paintings reproduce Middle East maps with texts and graphics narrating an assortment of scenarios and possible outcomes of the events. Another noteworthy group of paintings offers images of handprints of American soldiers accused of felony in Iraq, including detainee abuse and assault. The handprints have been redacted to efface individuating marks. Hanging the hands of the charged next to those found to be wrongly accused and those whose culpability has been lost, the artist symbolizes the fog of war.
Sculpture
The earliest works to be included in the exhibition are the tables from Holzer’s Lustmord series of 1993-95, triggered by events during the war in the former Yugoslavia. Here, human bones are laid out on large wooden tables with some bones wrapped with silver bands showing text. These signal a shift in Holzer’s work toward a more transparent engagement with the physical and psychological aspects of violence and trauma. These powerful, poignant objects and writing offer a dramatic analogue to the thematic content found elsewhere in the exhibition, and a contrasting visual and physical experience to the presence of light and movement in many of the other pieces.