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Selection from Truisms: Words tend to…, 2020 (text from Truisms, 1977–79), 2024
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Photography by Garrett Carroll

Sculpture

White Labradorite

17.00 x 25.00 x 16.00 in

43.2 x 63.5 x 40.6 cm

Edition of 6

This work is inscribed underneath the top with the studio’s inventory number. Courtesy of the Artist

ESTIMATED VALUE: $200,000 - $250,000

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About The Work

Holzer began making stone benches in the mid-1980s, initially seeing them as artifacts of her process, but over time recognizing their greater potential, revisiting them decades later. Functioning similarly to benches in city parks or cemeteries, they serve both communal and commemorative purposes, offering spaces for contemplation or group discussion. Adorned with her variously insightful, aggressive, or comic Truisms, Holzer hopes Words tend to… will provoke diverse responses.

Eliciting questions about authorship, origin, and ultimate meaning, the Truisms invite viewers to question their beliefs and values. As the artist noted in 1990, “I think that the Truisms act as a warning of how things are dangerously reduced to a one-liner or a tiny bit of information. They were sincere but they were also a warning.”

About Jenny Holzer

From The Magazine

  • Edition of 6 plus 1 AP

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