Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer manages to have a message starting with every letter except Q, X, and Z.  Not only does she do this but she also has many truism for every other letter in the alphabet.  These few words say so much about the message she is trying to convey in her work.  Holzer utilizes Aphorism to make the reader think about the message she shamelessly conveys.  For example “it's just an accident that your parents are your parents” is one aphoristic statement of ideas which many people do not think about on a regular basis.  Many of her statements are about concepts which people already know in the back of their mind.  Although most of her statements are arguably true, I personally don’t agree with all of them. Statements such as “you can understand someone of your sex only” are truisms which I do not fully agree with.  If this truism were true then I would be wasting my time trying to understand what Jenny Holzer and even my Professor Dolores Wilber are trying to say! Even though that is most likely not the message she is trying to convey, it shows that many of her statements can be debated. She also uses some truisms in her electronic LED lights which grabs viewers’ attention.  The stainless steel encasing makes it look very modern and significant. The bold look of the encasing only accentuates Holzer’s truisms. Her other works convey a message by incorporating truisms on buildings. She uses these buildings and cleverly places truisms on them to make her statements stand out.  Her work reminded me of the Chicago Art museums Public Notice 3 by Jitish Kallat. The staircases were his medium where he used different LED lights to convey his message.