In response to shootings across the United States, and in sympathy with students’ demands for more gun control, artist Jenny Holzer wrote text that animates issues of the firearms industry and gun violence. Her hyperactive black-and-white writing flashed on mobile LED screens, with text popping in quick succession like free-association poetry, and sometimes in the awful rapid-fire of semi-automatic weapons.
Jenny Hozler has mined declassified U.S. government documents for the series Redaction Paintings meticulously silk-screened works that depict blacked-out handprints of American soldiers accused of committing crimes in Iraq.
Jenny Holzer is known for her art relating to truisms. Her work has revolved around truisms and finding an artistic way to display them. Kind of Blue is another work comprising different aphorisms and truisms. It combines digital technology, reflections, and a very blue theme. Text-based art is Holzer’s specialty, and she works with it along with LED, Parking meters, and billboards .
tattoo on someone's thigh which reads "FEAR IS THE MOST ELEGANT WEAPON. YOUR HANDS ARE NEVER MESSY. THREATENING HARM IS CRUEL. WORK INSTEAD ON MINDS AND BELIEFS. PLAY INSECURITIES LIKE A PIANO. BE CREATIVE IN APPROACH. FORCE ANXIETY TO EXCRUCIATING LEVELS OR GENTLY UNDERMINE THE PUBLIC CONFIDENCE. PANIC DRIVES HUMAN HERDS OVER CLIFFS; AN ALTERNATIVE IS TERROR-INDUCED IMMOBILIZATION. FEAR FEEDS ON FEAR. PUT THIS EFFICIENT PROCESS IN MOTION.
In the 1980s, Holzer and Lady Pink used New York as a backdrop for their artworks: Holzer wheatpasted posters and slogans on walls throughout Manhattan, and Lady Pink spray-painted graffiti on buildings and subway cars. The two also collaborated on a series of paintings on canvas, such as this work, for which Holzer composed phrases and Lady Pink did the painting.
Holzer's Truisms have become part of the public domain, displayed in storefronts, on outdoor walls and billboards, and in digital displays in museums, galleries, and other public places, such as Times Square in New York. Multitudes of people have seen them, read them, laughed at them, and been provoked by them. That is precisely the artist's goal.