Anti-memorial

Jenny Holzer's another work - Anti-memorial in Nordhorn, Germany, containing a black garden.

In the early nineties in Nordhorn, a district town in Lower Saxony, on the German-Dutch border, Jenny Holzer chose a garden as her medium for the first time. Even though Holzer felt that using electronics were too insensitive for the project’s location, she took the risk, with expert advice from the American landscape artist Dee Johnson and the local municipal gardener, of designing a municipal park by the war memorial “Am Langemarckplatz,” built there in 1929.

                   

                   

Peace Memorial

 Jenny Holzer’s another work - Peace Memorial in Erlauf, Austria.

It consists of three parts: engraved plaques, a pillar with a beam of light and a flower bed, the planting of which was done in collaboration with Maria Auböck. White and grey shrubs and flowers are arranged in a circle around the post.

 

These engraved plaques basically express a radically anti-war position, rejecting all forms of hero-worship by uneuphemistically calling Horror by its name.

This beam of light comes from an anti-aircraft spotlight, which is switched on every evening, is to commemorate the meeting of the Allied meeting here fifty years before, on 8 May 1954, with a Russian and an American contribution.

Green Table

For the Stuart Collection, Holzer has created Green Table, a large granite picnic or refectory table and benches inscribed with texts. Like all tables, Holzer's work serve as an informal gathering place for students and faculty to eat, study, or play. But the various attitudes Holzer adopts in her writings - from humorous commentary to politically-charged criticism - also created a site for questioning and debate.

                 

                  

              

Truisms

Truisms is a claim that is so obvious or self-evident as to be hardly worth mentioning, except as a reminder or as a rhetorical or literary device and is the opposite of falsism.

Here is some of Jenny Holzer's truisms:

• A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE CAN GO A LONG WAY
• A MAN CAN'T KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE A MOTHER
• A NAME MEANS A LOT JUST BY ITSELF
• A POSITIVE ATTITUDE MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD
• A SINCERE EFFORT IS ALL YOU CAN ASK
• A SOLID HOME BASE BUILDS A SENSE OF SELF
• ACTION CAUSES MORE TROUBLE THAN THOUGHT
• ANGER OR HATE CAN BE A USEFUL MOTIVATING FORCE
• AWFUL PUNISHMENT AWAITS REALLY BAD PEOPLE
• BEING HAPPY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYTHING ELSE
• BOREDOM MAKES YOU DO CRAZY THINGS
• CALM IS MORE CONDUCIVE TO CREATIVITY THAN IS ANXIETY
• DESCRIPTION IS MORE VALUABLE THAN METAPHOR
• DON'T RUN PEOPLE'S LIVES FOR THEM
• DRAMA OFTEN OBSCURES THE REAL ISSUES
• ENJOY YOURSELF BECAUSE YOU CAN'T CHANGE ANYTHING ANYWAY
• EVERY ACHIEVEMENT REQUIRES A SACRIFICE
• EXTREME SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS LEADS TO PERVERSION
• LETTING GO IS THE HARDEST THING TO DO
• MOSTLY YOU SHOULD MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS
• MOTHERS SHOULDN'T MAKE TOO MANY SACRIFICES
• SELF-AWARENESS CAN BE CRIPPLING
• SELFLESSNESS IS THE HIGHEST ACHIEVEMENT
• SOME WOUNDS NEVER HEAL
• SOMETIMES ALL YOU CAN DO IS LOOK THE OTHER WAY
• SOMETIMES SCIENCE ADVANCES FASTER THAN IT SHOULD
• SOMETIMES THINGS SEEM TO HAPPEN OF THEIR OWN ACCORD
• THE CRUELEST DISAPPOINTMENT IS WHEN YOU LET YOURSELF DOWN
• THINKING TOO MUCH CAN ONLY CAUSE PROBLEMS

Survival Series

 Jenny Holzer- Survival, 1983-1985
This series was created to tell people about the human condition and how some ways to survive.

Here are some of her truisms from her artwork:

           

           

                           

Background

Jenny Holzer was born in Gallipolis, Ohio, on on July 29, 1950. She now lives and works in Hoosick Falls, New York as an American conceptual artist, known for her text-based works, which are constructed from "truisms" such as "abuse of power comes as no surprise" and "protect me from what I want.". For more than thirty years, Jenny Holzer has presented her astringent ideas, arguments, and sorrows in public places and international exhibitions.

Holzer also received the Leone d'Oro at the Venice Biennale in 1990 and the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum in 1996. She holds honorary degrees from Ohio University, Williams College, the Rhode Island School of Design, The New School, and Smith College. She have also received the Barnard Medal of Distinction in 2011.

Holzer experiments with the use of words visually displayed in public spaces and she is able to stimulate public discussions about violence, sexuality, oppression, human rights, feminism, power, war, and death. Starting with street posters, Holzer's practice has come to incorporate LED screens that run with stock-ticker-like texts, painted signs, plaques, photographs, sound, video, and the Internet.