Just over a month ago I visited the Guggenheim museum in New York City. One of the most refreshing works of art on display was Ann Hamilton’s monumental piece, “Human Carriage”. It’s beyond the scope of my writings here to delve into this work in great detail – suffice to say that it is a beautifully engineered work of art – delicately intertwined around the entire inner spiral balustrade of the Guggenheim’s 6 levels. And, makes you think about the subtleties on how information is internalized within and transmitted without.

So, this work leads me to Jenny Holzer, and her recent exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Her work is similarly focused on the use of non-traditional media and public settings to convey content, but is much more direct and confrontational in execution.

For around 30 years Holzer has been transmitting information to us on tee-shirts, billboards, telephone booths, and immense projections (usually on public buildings). More recently, she has turned to large LED signs, akin to the dynamic ticker displays you might see in New York’s Time Square. And while the displays are themselves innovative and visually engaging, it’s really about the content rather than the medium.

Usually, she flings the content at us in short snippets, sometimes lyrical, sometimes banal, often prescient. Holzer’s commentary ranges from the intimate – describing thoughts of lost love and personal sacrific, to the political and cultural – warning of existential threats to freedom and growing militarism. Holzer is probably best known for her Truisms, which she began in the late-1970s. Several of her best known (and my favorites):

a little knowledge can go a long way…? a lot of professionals are crackpots…? a sense of timing is the mark of genius…? all things are delicately interconnected…? being sure of yourself means you’re a fool…? calm is more conductive to creativity than is anxiety…? children are the hope of the future…? don’t place to much trust in experts…? good deeds eventually are rewarded…? humor is a release…? it’s better to be a good person than a famous person…? it’s vital to live in harmony with nature…? just believing something can make it happen…? knowledge should be advanced at all costs…? people are nuts if they think they are important…? people are responsible for what they do unless they are insane…? selfishness is the most basic motivation…? selflessness is the highest achievement…? sin is a means of social control…? solitude is enriching…? technology will make or break us…? unique things must be the most valuable…? with perseverance you can discover any truth…? you can live on through your descendants…? you can’t expect people to be something they’re not…? you must disagree with authority figures…? you must have one grand passion…? you must know where you stop and the world begins…

The Whitney exhibit – Jenny Holzer: Protect Protect – displays Holzer’s work from the mid-1990s to the present. It focuses on two keys elements: first, the increasing visual complexity of her work now displayed on immense floor-mounted or curved, two-sided LEDs with complex dynamic programming; and second, her recent thrust to disseminating facts rather than thoughts, particularly with her silk-screen renditions (pun intended) of declassified material concerning U.S. government and military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A very thought-provoking exhibit to say the least, and brings to mind one of Holzer’s aphorisms from 30 years ago: “abuse of power comes as no surprise”. Unfortunately, the exhibit just closed.