Jenny Holzer's (bn. 1950) medium has always really been the word. Trained as a painter at the Rhode Island School of Design, it was at the Whitney Program that she really began her text-based, socially oriented artform. Hitting New York City with her Truisms in the '70s (texts on sticker or posters), she has over the years diversified her thought-messages into different forms (garden furniture, plaques, T-shirts, billboards, especially electronic text). It was the Guggenheim's spiral that was a key moment in the start of a more architecture-oriented sculpture. And in public, her Xenon projections have superseded the fly-postering.

Jenny Holzer is currently presenting two new large scale LED light works in her first commercial gallery show in the UK at Sprueth Magers Lee in London (runs till 23/04/05).

Additional Info
designboom.com profile
Artforum interview (04/2003)
Interview interview (07/2002)
Interview (08/2000)
Interview (01/1997)
Wired Interview (02/1994)
Kunsthaus Bregenz Truth Before Power exhibition (06 to 09/2004)
Art In America exhibition review (11/1994)
KultureFlash images

This interview was conducted live at Sprueth Magers Lee on 04/02/05.

Sherman Sam: Is this your first time in collaboration?

Jenny Holzer: No, I've collaborated with Lady Pink and more artists, and I started using others' texts -- with gratitude -- when I began making memorials, when it made sense to have the voices of the people who had died or had been purged rather than my own. For projects like the piece at the Reichstag, I couldn't cover German history with my own text, so it was logical to use content from German stenographic records, what politicians had said on various issues, such as the boundaries of the nation, over the decades.

SS: And has it been easier not to come up with the text?

JH: Oh yeah, 'cause I hate to write!

SS: Then do you feel that you're an intermediary?

JH: No, I feel like an artist as opposed to a tortured, wannabe writer [laughs]. But yes, of course, it's more delicate when I'm using somebody else's writing because I have to be more careful than I would with my own text. It's lucky that I know Henri [Cole] pretty well, and we can talk back and forth, so there are checks and balances.

SS: So he's happy with this piece?

JH: I hope so, but you should interview him and get the low-down...

SS: What kind of checks and balances?

JH: I worry at night and that's a check, and I call Henri for advice. I don't want to do anything embarrassing with his work. For example, in Purple Cross, Henri's poem, "Blur", is lovely, serious and sad, so the electronic program could not be garish or inappropriate. The Cross and its programming had to be strong and bloody at times and, at others, serene and loving. I tried not to mimic the poem, but to respect and represent its qualities.

SS: I noticed in the poems that there was a real, how do I say it, "landscape quality"; a kind of beauty that came across only after a while in the way they were transmitting themselves, as if the language were in relation to the image that was being referred to.

JH: For "Beach Walk" [Rib Cage] -- that's the devastating poem -- I had the lines proceed on the white electronics in a relatively serene, circling manner, so that there would be peace and grace in the presentation, so that you didn't die immediately when you read it... [laughs] I also wanted the program to be relentless, so the poem and its trouble kept coming back and repeating and repeating...

SS: Picking up on this point of it being relentless, there is a quality of "hardness" to your work I find since you've made more electronic work. Yet with this piece, there is a "softer" quality to it... almost a romanticism, which does not seem to be present in the earlier work.

JH: The impression of softness could come from Henri's writing because he tends to gut you quietly, and the sign arrays make atmosphere; they fill rooms with coloured emotional light. And that may be what you mean by the romanticism? The light is a little like painting...

SS: Absolutely, I was admiring that piece from across the street earlier...

JH: That's the best view of "Beach Walk". That's how the array was to be seen in London, from way back, at night.

SS: I was surprised, it just takes you that way.

JH: The room's a bit tight for the pieces, so I tried to make good viewing points; one being across the street.

SS: Do you have a specific space requirement then?

JH: It's all by eye. A "sensitive art thing", you know? [laughs]

SS: I'd read that you came to use text-based work when you were at graduate school at RISD, but it was really after you'd been in the Whitney Program that you began to let the painting go and concentrate on the text. Where was the point when it became fully conscious to you?

JH: I went to liberal arts schools first, so I'm only half educated to be an artist. Perhaps the habit of text began then. I started a few conceptual works with text as an undergraduate, and words popped up again at RISD when I began writing on paintings. But, yes, you're right, when I was in New York, under the tutelage of Ron Clark, written content began to seem to be justified, even mandatory.

SS: How do you see the evolution of your work?

JH: Or de-evolution. My practice has split into several categories: the memorials, the public works, and one sort of work that I especially enjoy -- when I'm let into a great building. Then I have the pleasure and honour of replying to a smart architect. This started in Richard Gluckman's renovation of DIA, and then there was the Guggenheim...

SS: That was one of the best uses of the space I'd ever seen. It was as if it had been built for your piece.

JH: I finally read the Wright [Frank Lloyd] space. I was so stupid it took me forever to find the spiral, duh... [laughs] Once I did, I thought that I'd accentuate the curves, acknowledge them, adorn them.

SS: So those were key moments.

JH: Yes. Then I was able to work in Gehry's museum in Bibao. I was lucky that Thomas Krens invited me when the building was under construction, and I could walk the spaces and see how they came to "bend". Next there was Foster's Bundestag, and the Mies van der Rohe New National Gallery in Berlin. These projects gave me great joy...

SS: It struck me that the earlier work was very much content-oriented, and the context was just the street. The work was very much "isolated", whereas now -- here -- it's taken a more sculptural-textural quality, as if the site has a stronger determination.

JH: In some instances now, the place and/or the form of the work can be as important as the content. Examples are the adventures with good architecture, and the pieces in London might represent another version of the shift. Oddly enough, my interest in sculpture came, in large part, from the public projections. I've done xenon projections since '96, where I've thrown big scrolling text onto buildings, waves, and monuments. Somehow watching the writing flow over structures and nature has taught me 3-D, and has led to these corner pieces. I learned how to make objects in space without always needing the help of great architecture. Often just a generic 90-degree corner will do.

SS: I was told that you're planning to make a projection piece in London?

JH: I hope so, yeah, next year.

SS: And where would it be?

JH: Well, the locations are still up in the air. You tell me?!

SS: Buckingham Palace during the new year?

JH: Sure, can you arrange that date at the palace?

SS: Do you feel that when you're working in public the passer-by is a proper recipient? Or is it a guerrilla tactic on your part.

JH: What do you mean by "proper recipient"?

SS: When you make a work of art for a gallery, you know the visitor is there to see the art; whereas when you put your art on the street, you're taking a chance.

JH: It's easy for people to ignore the work and stroll away, so I don't believe that the public pieces are impositions. The work is available if people wish to see it, or they can walk on by. That most of the audience won't know that the projections are art is useful. Then viewers tend to be attentive to the language; they just read. And they don't know it's me, and that it's art, and I don't know if it is...

SS: Does it matter to you?

JH: Yes and no. I want the public pieces to be of mysterious interest, want to know if I can pick the right subjects and means of expression, make something useful but unknowable, have feeling fixed to facts...

SS: It seems that with the work you're making now, you've come closer to art than with what you became famous for.

JH: I wanted to be an artist, in a backward way. So now I have an occupation making stuff that kinda looks like art... [laughs] Cause I wanted to see if I could do it. Still the public work sustains me...

SS: Coming back to what I was saying about the web-based piece, that was a good ten years ago? Who made it?

JH: John Simon, Jr., and a group called ada'web, named after Lord Byron's daughter...

SS: And it's much more interactive -- in a way -- than most of your other works. I actually went on it and added my own bits...

JH: Thank you. The web piece was based on what people would do with the street posters. They'd write back to me on the posters, scratch out or highlight lines. The internet made the process simpler, and we can save the reworked Truisms.

SS: Do you consider that a valid response, someone scratching out lines?

JH: Oh yes, that is one of the goals.

SS: Readers take note! You say in one of your interviews, "My hand is one of the voices", referring to the tattoo pieces in the Lustmord show.

JH: "My hand is one of the voices"?

SS: Oh yes, that's what you said.

JH: That sounds more poetic than I am.

SS: It's interesting because, in a way, all your work is about voice, but in this case in particular you allow the graphic quality of your hand to speak

JH: I have no idea what I meant when I said that, but here's the current day interpretation. The character of my handwriting conveyed "something", and helped represent one of the three character types in Lustmord: the "Observer", the "Perpetrator" or "rapist", or the "Victim".

SS: And do you plan to use your "hand" more? 'Cause, in many ways your voice is present but your hand is missing.

JH: My "hand", by proxy, is in the work. But you're right to pick up on a phobia of mine; I've become more comfortable causing work to be without touching any materials. That's a reason I stopped painting. Now, however, I associate the atmospherics of these LED installations with touching, enveloping. So there's the virtual hand and more.

The xenon projections are tactile, as well. There's something feeling about the way the light will flow over a particular volume or surface... wood or stone or wave... Touching without touch, it's very modern!! [laughs]

SS: For instance how do you -- I don't know how to phrase this question without sounding stupid -- umm... where do get your inspiration from? For example, sometimes a little visual fragment in the world will be "useful" to me.

JH: I have any number of sources, from Henri's poems, to whatever -- for me usually the gruesome stuff -- that has happened in the world. All this may trigger projects. And then a lot of times the look of the world will have me love something enough to work, and, finally, the visual arts help... "What I see is what you get"! [laughs]

SS: Let's just return to the notion of the landscapes...

JH: Do you think of landscapes because the electronics here are horizontal?

SS: Yes, and something about the way the text changes as it's moving across seems to suggest a flickering landscape.

JH: It's my Haystacks [laughs]. Well, yes, the programs, the lights shift at different moments, and that's like changes in weather, or time, in a landscape. This may sound lame, but the signs are also like scanning the horizon... I'm an alarmist, so I'm always watching the horizon, so it's not surprising that the pieces have that quality.

SS: Is that why you make the work you make? 'Cause you're an alarmist?

JH: Sure. I want other people to be frightened.

SS: Do you feel then that you're trying to convey a specific message to people?

JH: Often I hope so, from text that's very clear cut, to thoughts that ooze in...

SS: What if I don't get it?

JH: I'm sorry then... Genuinely!

SS: I don't think they're difficult messages, but I think sometimes, quite possibly, people passing by don't necessarily see it as a message. How you couldn't I don't know.

JH: Yes, some people walk by, some can't or won't study the work, but I get enough feedback to make me think a number of people find the writing and its presentation helpful somehow, or curious at least...

SS: That's a start.

Sherman Sam is an artist and writer. He is on staff at KultureFlash and contributes to Contemporary and Third Text. His drawings can be viewed at the Flix project in the Rubicon Gallery and are included in the travelling show, Plan D (opening at the Model Arts and Niland Gallery in Sligo, Ireland this summer).

Image © 2005 Jenny Holzer, courtesy Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Text: "Beach Walk" by Henri Cole, © 2005 Henri Cole.