Fairs

Independent 20th Century
September 25–27, 2026
Private View: September 24
Booth: 409

At this year’s iteration of Independent 20th Century, Sprüth Magers is proud to present a sarcophagus and LED work from the Laments series by the influential conceptual artist Jenny Holzer, whose text-based practice is an ongoing investigation of language and the construction of meaning. The series was conceived during the height of the 1980s AIDS epidemic, which ravaged New York. With a generation of the city’s artistic community decimated, and survivors left grieving their peers, the crisis hit close to home for Holzer. Each text that appears in the Laments is a verse written by the artist from the perspective of the dying: a last-breath lamentation. These profoundly haunting meditations appear in two contrasting forms: flashing LED signs, urgent and technological, and carved stone sarcophagi, timeless and classical.