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POMERANZ COLLECTION

JENNY HOLZER

Survival
1999
Electronic LED sign with amber diodes
277 x 13,5 x 7,5 cm
Edition 3/5
Inv. Nr. 65
Photo: © VBK, Wien, 2011

Born 1950 in Gallipolis, Ohio, USA
Lives and works in Hoosick Falls, New York, USA

Jenny Holzer’s work combines a critical analysis on the politics of discourse with information and advertising strategies. After studying at Ohio University, Rhode Island School of Design and the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum, she has been dealing, since the late seventies, with language-based artworks in the course of daily life. For example, the series of Truisms is a collection of very simple sentences printed on anonymous white sheets of paper, put up on the facades of buildings or digitally displayed on signboards usually intended for publicity. Her short phrases range from common myths to sentences on random subjects in the form of statements that mimic advertising slogans including: “money creates taste”, “don’t place too much trust in experts”, “a man can’t know what it’s like to be a mother”… The Survival series, primarily developed in 1983-1985, utilizes LED machines to display more personal and urgent opinions, dealing with realities of everyday life, its dangers and its underlying horrors. The expressive force of the texts faces the emotionless technological framework and highlights the limitations of the information era.