Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer – First abstract painter, then conceptual and installation artist

Jenny Holzer was born on 29 July 1950 in Gallipolis, Ohio. Her father a German car dealer and her mother a riding instructor, she spent her childhood in Lancaster. After graduating from high school, she studied at various universities in Durham and Ohio and took two semesters of drawing and print art at the University of Chicago before graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1972. This was followed in 1975 by the Rhode Island School of Design in New York where she graduated with a Master’s Degree of Fine Arts in 1977. That same year, she moved to New York City to take part in an Independent Study Programme at the Whitney Museum of American Art – here she worked for the first time with text as an art form, having previously appeared primarily as an abstract painter. She found fame, however, as a conceptual and installation artist, celebrating her breakthrough with the so-called ‘Truisms’, single-line texts that she distributed as anonymous posters throughout Lower Manhattan from 1977 to 1979. 

LED strip lights as ambassador for the public space

Jenny Holzer herself justifies her orientation to language as a central design element with her insufficient talent to express herself painterly. With her art, she wants to reach an audience, to occupy a public space, to convey a clear message, without raising an admonishing finger, truthful and humorous – this is how the artist describes her intention. For this, she no longer uses simple posters, but has identified LED light strips as her tool of choice via t-shirts, stickers, and benches in particular. It was such an LED installation that brought Jenny Holzer fame far beyond the boundaries of the USA: the giant LED light panel at New York’s Time Square greeted passers-by with thought-provoking texts which, among other things, alluded to abuse of power and rash desires. With her installations, Holzer doesn’t simply throw only text into the room, but also plays thoughtfully with tempo, colour, form and rhythm. 

Much regarded installations in the USA and Germany

Jenny Holzer still stresses that it is not the effect but the message that stands at the centre of her art, which has now reached Germany and the German Bundestag. There, she set up a large-scale installation at the north entrance of the Reichstag building. In the installation, selected speeches by parliamentarians are played on digital neon columns, occasionally interrupted by flashing interjections. For the city of Wiesbaden, the artist designed a memorial for the victims of National Socialism, which did not, however, come to fruition. Having theoretically turned her back on painting, Jenny Holzer has returned to the medium: for her Dust Paintings, she painted over state documents. Her themes are the world’s great areas of dispute: politics, feminism, AIDS, gender and the environment. Language is a powerful image for the American, if you know how to paint with it properly.