Selections from "Truisms"

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Selections from "Truisms"

Artist Jenny Holzer (American, born 1950)

Date1985

DimensionsH: 6 1/2 in. (16.5 cm); W: 121 1/2 in. (308.6 cm); Depth: 4 in. (10.2 cm)

MediumElectronic LED sign with red diodes

ClassificationSculpture

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1988.19

Not on View

Label TextIn 1979, Jenny Holzer began posting random aphorisms and broadsides bearing cryptic messages all over New York City. Since then she has employed language as her sole medium. A truism is a statement widely believed to be true. About her interest in creating Truisms, Holzer said, "If I wanted to talk about the stuff, it seemed reasonable to just say it or write it. For a while I was just writing all these truisms, without knowing what I was going to do with them. The ideas of posters came from all the music posters I’d seen up, and all the political posters.…" Commercially printed in cool, bold italics, numerous one-line statements like ‘Abuse of power comes as no surprise' were meant to be provocative and elicit public debate. Thereafter Holzer used language and the mechanics of late 20th-century communications as an assault on established notions of where art should be shown, with what intention, and for whom. Her texts took the forms of posters, billboards, television, and her signature medium, the LED (light emitting diode) sign.Exhibition HistoryToledo Museum of Art, Word Play, October 16, 2009- February 7, 2010.Comparative ReferencesSee also Ferguson, Bruce, "Wordsmith: An Interview with Jenny Holzer," Art in America, December 1986, pp. 108-115, 153. Cf. Basel, Kunsthalle Basel; Lyon, Le Nouveau Musee, Jenny Holzer, 1984, pp. 9-20, repr. Cf. Des Moines, Des Moines Art Center (Circulating exhibition), Jenny Holzer: Signs, 1986-1988, pp. 8-19, repr.