DANCE ON DOWN TO THE GOVERNMENT
AND TELL THEM YOU’RE EAGER TO RULE
“I was just told there is an active shooter
on the first floor of the Capitol”
DANCE ON DOWN TO THE GOVERNMENT
AND TELL THEM YOU’RE EAGER TO RULE
“I was just told there is an active shooter
on the first floor of the Capitol”
WORDS connects Jenny Holzer’s longstanding interest in the realities of living and survival with the political prospects and technological anxieties of the moment. Drawings, paintings, condoms, electronics, and stone are woven into a conversation spanning the artist’s entire output to date, whose subject matter ranges from desolation to deliverance, from the mundane to the absurd. Placed side by side with the language of chatbots and intelligence reports, texts written by Holzer decades ago can be read as prescient commentary on current events.
The 2021 assault on the US Capitol looms over this exhibition, beginning with the words “fliers for the January 6th protest in D.C.” and “DonaldsArmy” on a painting at the front of the gallery. This is a precise reproduction of a page from the congressional committee report on the attack, enlarged and rendered in oils and gold leaf.
The 2021 assault on the US Capitol looms over this exhibition, beginning with the words “fliers for the January 6th protest in D.C.” and “DonaldsArmy” on a painting at the front of the gallery. This is a precise reproduction of a page from the congressional committee report on the attack, enlarged and rendered in oils and gold leaf.
Holzer began creating paintings based on government documents in 2005 as a way of sharing information on the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and she has expanded the practice to encompass the impeachment inquiries into Donald Trump and research on the military applications of artificial intelligence.
“swarm autonomy: Adaptive, complex, collective behaviors
for intelligent movement, decisions, and interactions”
THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR
WILL BE SECRET
The process of creating these paintings begins with tracing their source documents onto vellum. Holzer has recently begun to transform these tracings into artworks in their own right – shown here for the first time – through the addition of gestural marks in graphite and charcoal. Some of these markings form abstract patterns, while others reinforce the redactions in the original pages, as if to underscore the gaps in our knowledge. Still others evidence the hands that made them: There are fingerprints all over these documents.
“1) put together package 2) go to D.C. with package 3) do my “magic” and cut deal”
“1) put together package 2) go to D.C. with package 3) do my “magic” and cut deal”
ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE
Interspersed with these drawings are other graphite tracings, which feature the artist’s own words and have their origins in her early stoneworks. When Holzer started making stone benches in the mid-1980s, texts were first copied by hand onto sheets of vellum before being transferred to the stone for engraving. As with her painting tracings, she came to see greater potential in these artifacts of her process and has returned to them decades after the fact, smudging the text to add emphasis and create gestural compositions. She has also begun to produce new ones, in some cases creating layouts for benches that do not (yet) exist.
Interspersed with these drawings are other graphite tracings, which feature the artist’s own words and have their origins in her early stoneworks. When Holzer started making stone benches in the mid-1980s, texts were first copied by hand onto sheets of vellum before being transferred to the stone for engraving. As with her painting tracings, she came to see greater potential in these artifacts of her process and has returned to them decades after the fact, smudging the text to add emphasis and create gestural compositions. She has also begun to produce new ones, in some cases creating layouts for benches that do not (yet) exist.
YOU CREATE AN INCIDENT
TO BRING THE FURY DOWN
“Pls have POTUS call this off at the Capitol.
Urge rioters to disperse. I pray to you.”
Several benches that did exist now lie smashed at the front of the gallery, in a scene of deliberate destruction emblematic of “what one sees on the news,” in the artist’s words. Two LED signs atop the rubble are custom-programmed with contrasting sets of AI-generated text: a “bad” program of incendiary statements in the style of the far right (some produced by the “traditional American” chatbot GIPPR AI), and a “good” program describing transcendent experiences of joy, love, and beauty. Holzer’s work has always operated between these two poles, leavening darkness with kindness and reminding us that ALL THINGS ARE DELICATELY INTERCONNECTED.
ROCKS AWAKEN BATHED IN EARLY SUNLIGHT
“fake news and lies”
I SPIRAL IN THE CYCLONE OF MOTION
“Risk of whiplash type injury”
TURN SOFT AND LOVELY ANYTIME YOU HAVE A CHANCE
“I was able to keep the crazies off the stage”
EL HUMOR ES UNA LIBERACIÓN
Holzer’s experiments with artificial intelligence arise from the same spirit of inquiry that has guided her many other investigations into the nefarious and the sublime, the same desire to play and be of public service that led her to fill the gallery’s window on the street below with thousands of condoms. Here, ultimately, is the fundamental conviction that a democracy can only function if its citizens understand the forces that hold the potential to transform their lives.
Jenny Holzer
WORDS
September 5–November 2, 2024
New York
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Jenny Holzer
WORDS
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