“I would like there to be less fear and less cruelty, I’ll stand on that.”
An icon of American conceptualism
Holzer is best known for her Truisms, which encapsulate difficult ideas in pithy phrases like “ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE.” Experimenting with text across diverse media, she deploys these phrases in the form of immersive installations, LED displays, billboards, posters, plaques and condom wrappers. Tirelessly drawing attention to human suffering through subjects like the AIDS crisis, the wars in Yugoslavia and the Middle East, and school shootings in America, Holzer presents powerful words from a multitude of perspectives. The accessibility of her work is key. It is not simply what sh...
Bio
American neo-conceptualist Jenny Holzer was born in 1950 in Gallipolis, Ohio, and now lives and works in New York.
Movements
Holzer belongs to a trailblazing cohort of feminist artists who emerged in the early 1980s, with contemporaries such as Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Charlesworth and Louise Lawler.
Did you know?
While the artist's practice focuses primarily on art in the public sphere, drawing attention to a plethora of contemporary crises, she has also forged an illustrious career with countless gallery shows, auction records nearing a million dollars and a host of high-profile collectors - Elton John included!
