Jenny Holzer

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Jenny Holzer (born July 29, 1950 in Gallipolis , Ohio ) is an American concept and installation artist . Her work focuses on the use of text and the use of public space as exhibition space.

Life

Holzer grew up as the daughter of a German car dealer and a riding instructor in Lancaster . After high school , she enrolled at Duke University in Durham , North Carolina in 1968 and took summer courses at Ohio University . In 1970 she studied drawing and printing at the University of Chicago for two semesters . In 1972 she graduated from Ohio University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts . From 1975 to 1977 she attended the Rhode Island School of Design in New York and received her Masters Degree of Fine Arts in 1977 . After moving to New York City in 1977 , she attended the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art and began working with 'text' as an art form. At this time Holzer was an active member of the New York artist group Colab . In 1983 she married the artist Mike Glier and had a daughter. The family has lived on a former farm in Hoosick , New York, since 1985 . Jenny Holzer also has a second home in Manhattan .

Artistic creation

Installation in the reception hall of the 7th WTC
Jenny Holzer portrayed by Oliver Mark , Leipzig 1996

Jenny Holzer began her career as an abstract painter. In the late 1970s she experimented with diagrams and words and developed into a concept and installation artist . Her works deal with topics such as AIDS , politics , violence, sex , the environment , feminism and power structures.

The “Truisms”, a series of one-liners that were posted in the form of anonymous posters on buildings, walls and fences in Lower Manhattans from 1977–79 are considered to be Holzer's first and best-known artistic work in public space . Later, Holzer also distributed the Truisms through other media, such as LED light strips , benches, stickers, T-shirts and the WWW .

In 1979 Holzer wrote the Inflammatory Essays , which she also reproduced as a poster series. In the following work, Living series, in 1981, the artist used aluminum and bronze plates as carrier media for her texts.

From 1982 Holzer began to present the “Truisms” and later the Survival Series (1983–1984) on LED screens. From 1986 onwards she turned to stone as a new medium and for the first time combined granite stone benches with her neon letters for an exhibition at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York. Pursuing this practice further, in 1989 she exhibited a monumental installation consisting of a 163-meter-long spiral of neon letters along the interior walls of the New York Guggenheim Museum . In the same year Holzer was chosen as the first artist to represent the USA at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990. Her installation “Mother and Child” there was awarded the Golden Lion .

In Germany she first chose a garden as a medium for an “anti-memorial” against war and National Socialism in the early 1990s as part of the international landscape art project Kunstwegen in Nordhorn . In 2002 she received the Kaiserring of the city of Goslar .

In June 2005, the city parliament of Wiesbaden decided, with the votes of the CDU , FDP and republicans , not to erect a memorial designed by Holzer for the victims of National Socialism . Since 2009 tree trunks have been laid in the park of Schloss Rheder (district of Höxter), in which texts from the projects "Survival" and "Under the Rock" are engraved together with poems by Henri Cole.

Since 2004 Jenny Holzer has turned back to painting. In her "Dust Paintings" Holzer used American state documents, which she painted over with paint.

In 2011 Holzer was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2018 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Truisms (since 1979)

With the Truisms , Jenny Holzer put together a series of statements and aphorisms that represent a wide spectrum from individual positions to common-sense statements and truisms. The short and concise sentences concern social issues and problems, including politics , sex , feminism , gender , AIDS , the environment , class and family structures, but also war , sexual violence against women and, again and again, the essence of power .

Originally already at the time when Holzer was completing her master's program at the Rhode Island School of Design , collected as a list, the number of Truisms grew steadily: in total there are now between 250 and 300 pieces, which, however, were never united in a common work, but rather exist in different versions. First, Jenny Holzer typed the Truisms on typewriter paper and photocopied them. She later had a series of posters printed. A poster contained around 40 to 60 one-liner statements, listed alphabetically, in black letters on white paper. As a type she used Futura and Times New Roman . Truisms also appeared on items such as mugs, t-shirts, baseball caps, condoms, and golf balls.

In 1982 the Truisms were displayed on the Spectacolor Lightboard in One Times Square . The display took place as part of the artist project “Messages to the Public” (1982–1990) under the patronage of the Public Art Fund. Each month a different artist showed a 30-second animation on the first computer-controlled color-capable large-screen display board. The artistic animations were embedded in the regular advertisements and repeated about 50 times a day; The Truisms animation series lasted two weeks in total. In the same year, the Truisms were presented on a house facade on the occasion of documenta 7 in Kassel , also in telephone booths and in 1999 on a BMW V12 racing car for the Le Mans 24-hour race ( BMW Art Car ).

Works (selection)

  • since 1979: Truisms
  • early 1980s: Living Series
  • 1978–1979: Inflammatory essays with texts by Trotsky , Hitler , Mao , Lenin and Emma Goldman
  • 1983–1985: Survival Series , with more militant aphorisms.
  • 1986: Under a Rock
  • 1989: Lament
  • 1990: Mother and Child, a work on maternity for the Venice Biennale .
  • 1991: Installation for Aachen (permanent LED installation with excerpts from the Truisms and other series) in the Ludwig Forum for International Art in Aachen
  • 1994: Black Garden / Schwarzer Garten (built 1992–1994) as part of the sculpture project Kunstwege in Nordhorn
  • 1995: Please Change Beliefs , created for the net art gallery adaweb.
  • 1997: Oskar Maria Graf monument in the Literaturhaus Munich
  • 1999: Text column in the Bundestag , on which 447 speeches by German MPs from the years 1871 to 1999 take place
  • 2005: For Paula Modersohn-Becker in the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum in Bremen
  • 2008: Text projection of a poem by the Polish Nobel Prize laureate Wisława Szymborska on the facade of the Merchandise Mart in Chicago , Illinois , on the occasion of Art Chicago
  • 2010: For Frankfurt , text projections at six different locations in Frankfurt am Main, such as the Nikolaikirche am Römerberg and the Literaturhaus Frankfurt (2010)
  • 2017: Illumination of Silo No. 5 in Montreal from November 5 to 12 as a tribute to Leonard Cohen during the celebrations for the city's 375th anniversary: ​​text projections from the literary work and songs of the Montreal artist in English, French and Spanish.
  • 2020: The big, and mighty Kim Jong-Un

literature

  • Michael Auping, Jenny Holzer: Jenny Holzer , New York 1992.
  • Holland Cotter: Jenny Holzer at Barbara Gladstone, New York , in: Art in America, n ° 74, New York 1986, pp. 137-138.
  • Francisco Calvo Seraller: (inlet): Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Collection . Guggenheim Bilbao 2009, ISBN 978-84-95216-61-8 .
  • Jenny Holzer, Diane Waldman: Jenny Holzer . Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-89322-915-9 .
  • Jenny Holzer: Jenny Holzer. New National Gallery Berlin . Ostfildern 2001, ISBN 3-7701-5854-7 .
  • Jenny Holzer, Noemi Smolik: Art Today, No 9, Jenny Holzer . Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-462-02297-0 .
  • Julia Wallner : Jenny Holzer's Truisms: Language, Language Criticism and the Love of Truth , in: Artists as Science, Art Historians and Writers, ed. v. Michael Glasmeter, Vol. 6, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-89770-331-5 , pp. 231–243.
  • Lutz Jahre: Places - words: on the artist contribution by Jenny Holzer , in: AKMB-News, vol. 5, no 1, 2015, pp. 24-27.
  • Udo Weilacher : Hero's death in the tulip field. Black garden in Nordhorn. In: Udo Weilacher: In gardens. Profiles of current European landscape architecture. Basel Berlin Boston 2005, ISBN 3-7643-7084-X .
  • Rainer Stamm (ed.), Jenny Holzer: For Paula Modersohn-Becker . Museums Böttcherstraße , Bremen 2005, ISBN 3-9804677-9-1 .
  • Jenny Holzer: Jenny Holzer XX . [Publication on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name in the Museum of Applied Arts, MAK Vienna , May 17 - September 17, 2006]. Schlebrügge Ed., Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-85160-082-7 .

Web links

Commons : Jenny Holzer  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Francisco Calvo Seraller: (inlet): Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Collection . Guggenheim Bilbao 2009, p. 507.
  2. ^ Jenny Holzer - Munzinger biography. In: Munzinger Archive, Ravensburg. Retrieved March 13, 2017 .
  3. ^ A b Julia Wallner: Jenny Holzer's Truisms: Language, language criticism and the love of truth . In: Michael Glasmeier (Ed.): Artists as science, art historians and writers . tape 6 . Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-89770-331-5 , pp. 231-243 .
  4. ↑ a b c Michael Auping, Jenny Holzer: Jenny Holzer . New York 1992.
  5. ^ Holland Cotter: Jenny Holzer at Barbara Gladstone, New York . In: Art in America . No. 74 . New York 1986, p. 137-138 (English).
  6. ^ Jenny Holzer: Installation for Bilbao. In: Guggenheim Collection. Retrieved March 13, 2017 (English).
  7. ^ Lutz Years: Places - Words: on the artist contribution by Jenny Holzer . In: AKMB-News . tape 5 , no. 1 , 2015, p. 24-27 .
  8. ^ Jenny Holzer, Dust Paintings, Cheim & Read, New York . In: Aesthetica Magazine . September 18, 2014 ( aestheticamagazine.com [accessed March 13, 2017]).
  9. ↑ Academy Members. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed January 10, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Irene Netta, Ursula Keltz: 75 years of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich . Ed .: Helmut Friedel. Self-published by the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-88645-157-7 , p. 244 .
  11. ^ Jenny Holzer: Messages to the Public. In: Public Art Fund. Retrieved March 13, 2017 (English).
  12. ^ Kunstforum International: Volume 145, 1999, p. 88. Brigitte Franzen The Black Garden.
  13. ↑ Please Change Beliefs on Walkerart.org.
  14. ↑ When words learn to fly. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , October 6, 2010, page 32.
  15. ^ Wiebke Porombka: Poems under difficult conditions. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 8, 2011.
  16. ^ The MAC and Jenny Holzer in Leonard Cohen's Honor - MAC Montréal In: macm.org , accessed September 18, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Holzer, Jenny
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American conceptual artist
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Gallipolis , Ohio