Jenny Holzer

Jenny was born in 1950 in Ohio. She then went off to school and got a BFA in painting and print making form the University of Ohio in 1972. Then she went off to get an MFA in painting in RISD. She went to the school of design in Rhode Island as a painter. She would paint simple aesthetics like Morris Louis.  Jenny started in her work in the 1976 in New York City. She enrolled in the Whitney museum independent study program.  Most of her work is simple phrases called Truisms. They come across as the most random slogans. She then presented her work on a stage with anonymous artists work. She then put her work on the walls of buildings on the strangest architectures. When she started she pasted the postings on buildings herself.

If you get offended easily you shouldn’t check out her work. Some has explicit content and bold statements about the society today. When she developed more as an artist she didn’t only use buildings to post her work. She also used her slogans on billboards, commercials, T-shirts and coffee mugs.

The she decided to take it even further to see if society can control what is on their television set so she turned to  the media to exploit her art of phrases and absurd statements. In her exhibit it was filled with electronic screens and two benches carves with artists writings. Which could be chairs, but also a piece of art as well.

Her Xenon projects are posted in Berlin, Venice, Rio De Janeiro, Rome, Florence, Buenos Aires, Oslo, Paris, Bordeaux, Berlin, Washington, Miami and New York City. She received the Leone D’oro for her American pavilion at the 1990 Venice Biennale and also the 2002 Kaiserring form the city of Goslar, Germany and was awarded the public art network annual award by the Americans in 2004. She also has a book called Jenny Holzer ‘Die Macht Des Wirthes’ (the power of words in German.