WHEN SOMEONE BEATS YOU WITH A FLASHLIGHT YOU MAKE LIGHT SHINE IN ALL DIRECTIONS
Catalog
Jenny Holzer
Jenny Holzer (born July 29, 1950, Gallipolis, Ohio) is an American neo-conceptual artist, based in Hoosick Falls, New York. The main focus of her work is the delivery of words and ideas in public spaces. Holzer belongs to the feminist branch of a generation of artists that emerged around 1980, looking for new ways to make narrative or commentary an implicit part of visual objects. Her contemporaries include Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Charlesworth, and Louise Lawler. The public dimension is integral to Holzer's work. Her large-scale installations have included advertising billboards, projections on buildings and other architectural structures, and illuminated electronic displays. LED signs have become her most visible medium, although her diverse practice incorporates a wide array of media including street posters, painted signs, stone benches, paintings, photographs, sound, video, projections, the Internet, and a race car for BMW. Text-based light projections have been central to Holzer’s practice since 1996. As of 2010, her LED signs have become more sculptural. Holzer is no longer the author of her texts, and in the ensuing years, she returned to her roots by painting. 2Education Originally aspiring to become an abstract painter, Holzer's studies included general art courses at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina (1968–1970), and then painting, printmaking and drawing at the University of Chicago before completing her BFA at Ohio University, Athens (1972
Ruin your fucking self before they do.
Oh lord when you are alone and do not want to be, you lie in bed with your own shoulder wrapped around and beneath yourself so that the surges of pain keep you company. This is hurtful but it is so much better than no nerves firing at all. The worst is when there’s no one near to press on you and…