Response to Jenny Holzer's Pieces

On Truisms:

The very first quality I noticed about this piece by Jenny Holzer was its physical appearance.  As I read, I found it more difficult to read on because of the stark contrast between the black background and the red, bold text.  And much like the messages we hear and read on a daily basis, Holzer’s work meets your eyes with blatant force.  Despite the statements the audience reads, their physical presence is inevitably harsh and bold to the naked eye.

Professor Wilber mentioned on Tuesday that we receive something in the area of 5000 messages a day­.  Holzer probably had a concept of this when she created this.  There is no particular order involved in the messages we hear or see, nor do they appear to be (in my opinion) in Truisms, except for the trend of beginning a series of truisms with a new letter of the alphabet.  I do not intend to say that her messages are senseless, only that I do not see a literal connection between each of them.  Her truisms, however, challenge the many sociocultural and political institutions across the world—namely, Westernized society.  Being a critic of the status quo, media control and influence, and the institutions to which people conform, she sends out messages like: “hiding your emotions is despicable”, which may criticize the expectation that a man is only a man when he is strong and virile; “humanism is obsolete”, possibly criticizing the self-interest of greedy, capitalistic monsters and their apathy towards sharing and helping others; or “mothers shouldn’t make too many sacrifices”, obviously promoting a feminist standpoint and criticizing that mothers are still individuals after having a child, and they are entitled to preserve that.

On her work from the Barbara Krakow Gallery

Jenny Holzer's work in this gallery contains various portrayal styles (several in each, but also some stand alone and fit in a miscellaneous category).  The pieces that provoked the most thought for me were her LED signs (curved and flat).  When I took a look at the LED signs, I first wondered if, when looking at them in person, the messages shown are constantly moving; if so, they obviously aren't here because one image of each LED sign is captured and shown as an example for the purposes of the website.  In either case, my thoughts apply.

I was thinking that, if Holzer – like Barbara Kruger and other photo-text/Conceptual artists of the 1980s – is a critic of, among other institutions, technology, then the LED signs with messages intact show that technology is a rapid and constantly shifting process; it does not "wait" for people to bring themselves up to speed because of its very nature, which I just described.  Also, technology allows for advances in civilizations that take advantage of it, and it provides a means for progress through convenience.  However, technology contains its own limits, and I think that the constant scroll of the words on the screen – coming and going, going and coming – alludes to not only technology's limits and constant renewals, but also to the fact that technology is not always reliable and that it leaves us uncertain at many points.

I chose the below image because I personally think it's hilarious.  I don't know what it means exactly, of course, but it seems like the end of a conversation that took place before this moment (which is captured in the piece).  Whoever is doing the talking, his/her statement contains an air of absolute indifference to what the other has just argued.  And so it is with good reason that the person doing the talking says, sarcastically, "I'm sitting on a giant ear.  Your argument is invalid."

~ Gina Marroquin