Jenny Holzer

born 1950 in Gallipolis, Ohio (USA); 1972 received a B.A. in printmaking and painting from Ohio University; 1975 entered the M.A. painting program at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, while there, she began to introduce language into her work; 1977 earned a degree at Rhode Island School of Design and enrolled in the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; lives and works in New York City (USA).
Since the late 1970s, when her aphoristic Truisms and her Inflammatory Essays were first posted anonymously around New York, Jenny Holzer´s work has sought to reformulate many of the givens of traditional art, especially in the context of public spaces. Writing is the basis of Holzer´s practice. Although most of Holzer´s content is original, on occasion, she works with historic or archival sources (for example, in her several commissioned permanent memorial works). Holzer employs her texts singly or in combination in her permanent works, installations and xenon projections. Media employed in Holzer´s practice vary. Writing is programmed into electronic signs; printed on posters and t-shirts; carved in sandstone benches, marble floors and granite sarcophagi; cast as bronze plaques; or etched on silver. Further, her statements have appeared on billboards, movie marquees, automobiles, in news magazines, and on websites, as well as being projected onto facades, walls, water and mountainsides by laser or with xenon. Jenny Holzer makes use of the insistent appeal of modern advertising media for her own ideas.