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
- Interviews & Features: Art for Democracy: Bid or Buy Now
- Interviews & Features: Jenny Holzer on Art, Life, & Everything In Between
- Interviews & Features: ANATOMY OF AN ARTWORK Untitled (I Shop Therefore I Am) 1987/ 2019 by Barbara Kruger
- Interviews & Features: Cig Harvey - The Art For Home Interview
- Interviews & Features: Look Inside The New York City AIDS Memorial Auction
Sculpture
White Labradorite
17.00 x 25.00 x 16.00 in
43.2 x 63.5 x 40.6 cm
This work is inscribed underneath the top with the studio’s inventory number. Courtesy of the Artist
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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
- Interviews & Features: Art for Democracy: Bid or Buy Now
- Interviews & Features: Jenny Holzer on Art, Life, & Everything In Between
- Interviews & Features: ANATOMY OF AN ARTWORK Untitled (I Shop Therefore I Am) 1987/ 2019 by Barbara Kruger
- Interviews & Features: Cig Harvey - The Art For Home Interview
- Interviews & Features: Look Inside The New York City AIDS Memorial Auction
Edition of 6 plus 1 AP
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