Vince Cross on Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer, famous for her large-scale public displays, include billboard advertisements, projection on buildings and other architectural structures and illuminated electronic displays.  Other mediums include on street posters, bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches and footstools. She was constantly looking at new ways to make narrative or commentary an implicit part of visual objects. She is well known for her work, Truisms which is a compiled series of statements and aphorisms which have been publicised in a variety of ways and forms, some of which have been mentioned. As a feminist herself, her work speaks of violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, power, war and death. Her main concern is to enlighten, bringing to light something thought in silence and meant to remain hidden.  Since the 90s, she has been using light projections as a medium.

“…overwhelmed to a point where we don’t know who or what to believe.”

Her styles functions the same way as advertising does. It is about having access and knowledge about the tools that advertisers have and using it in a different way. The message she portrays and the way she does it is lot less confrontational and lot less judgemental. She uses such large scale public displays to reach as many people as possible.

“She writes from different, opposing perspectives, working in direct contrast to advertising.”

- Vince Cross

This greatly influences people who read her work or those like us who are told about her. What I learned from this was that we don’t have to be restrained by how we can show our creativity and ideas. Every surface is a canvas if we just open our minds and see the possibilities. Like the previous lectures, this lecture also teaches us that nothing should stop us from doing something big and different.

Another example that I found is an artist by the name of Micah Lexier, who makes art combining the traditions of conceptual art with sculpture. Conceptualism, an idea in Lexiers work precedes the means used to express it. He has the same sort of approach as Holzer, using the environment and big spaces for his art and like Holzer, his work is also text based. Here is an example of a collaborative work between Lexier and poet Christian Bok.