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Jenny Holzer
Survival Series: Wooden Pencil Set
1991

About the Item

Title: Survival Series: Wooden Pencil Set Artist: Jenny Holzer Medium: 12 unsharpened natural-wood pencils with erasers, each with stamped text Size: 8 x 6.75 x 2 inches, (20.3 x 17.1 x 5.1 cm) Year: 1991 Publisher: Albright-Know Art Gallery ABOUT PINK SHRIMP FINE ART: For more than 16 years, the directors of Pink Shrimp Fine Art have specialized in American, European, and Asian art of the 20th century, particularly that of the second half of the 20th century. Areas of emphasis include Post-War, Pop, Photorealism, Hyperrealism, Magic Realism, Neo-Expressionism, and Graffiti. Pink Shrimp Fine Art, a private dealership, is located on Los Angeles's Miracle Mile and available by appointment only. The dealership advises private collectors, corporations, and museums on acquisitions. The public collections that the directors of the dealership have placed artworks into the permanent collections of include: — Smithsonian Institution, American Art Museum — Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History — Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History — Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art — Smithsonian Libraries — Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division & Rare Books and Special Collections — Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System — Museum of Fine Arts, Boston — Detroit Institute of Arts — Dartmouth College, Rauner Special Collections Library — Rutgers University, Zimmerli Art Museum — The George Washington University, Luther M. Brady Art Gallery — The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction — Forest Lawn Museum — National Hellenic Museum — National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library — The Long Island Museum of Art, History and Carriages — Flint Institute of Arts — Children's Hospital, Boston — Children's Hospital of Philadelphia — Detroit Historical Museum — Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum The directors of Pink Shrimp Fine Art have curated exhibitions throughout North America, at venues including the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, the Forest Lawn Museum, the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, the Anton Art Center, the Florida State Capitol Complex, and the Albrecht Kemper Museum of Art, among others. Pink Shrimp Fine Art welcomes all inquiries from collectors who may wish to sell or consign artworks or estates. The dealership can provide valuation services as well.

Creator:
Jenny Holzer (1950, American)
Creation Year:
1991
Medium:
Wood
Movement & Style:
Contemporary
Period:
21st Century
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Los Angeles, CA
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU1972611012

Shop All Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer

Known for taking art out of the traditional “white cube” of galleries and museums and onto the streets, Jenny Holzer is one of the most potent feminist Neo-Conceptual artists of the 20th century. Her most iconic work critiques the information age and consumerism by reclaiming its primary media — conventional print billboards, storefront posters and LED signs.

“I used language because I wanted to offer content that people — not necessarily art people — could understand,” the Ohio-born Holzer told Interview magazine. She received her MFA in painting from Rhode Island School of Design, where her work was influenced by Abstract Expressionism. It was while in the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art that Holzer became inspired to work at the intersection of public art and language.

In the late 1970s, after becoming an active participant in the downtown Manhattan artist collective Colab, which included Tom Otterness and Christy Rupp, Holzer began to create her legendary “Truisms” series. Printing anonymous one-line aphorisms in bold and italicized text on broadsheets, she pasted them up in public spaces all over New York City. The “Truisms” are provocative in questioning how we receive and process information. The work elicits debate and represents a range of perspectives. In an era that saw the rise of street art and graffiti, Holzer’s pithy word art would also find viewers by way of T-shirts, stickers and park benches, into which her slogans were carved.

Holzer’s more combative “Inflammatory Essays” (1979–82) took the form of mass-produced posters on colored paper — each featuring paragraphs as compared to the punch-line structure of “Truisms.” These touched on subjects such as violence, misogyny, power structures and consumerism, all of which have continued to be central in her work.

Starting in 1982 as part of a Public Art Fund project, Holzer projected “Protect me from what I want” and other “Truisms” on the Spectacolor board, a large computerized light signboard in New York City’s Times Square. Her “Abuse of power comes as no surprise,” which has appeared on T-shirts as part of the series, has taken on new life in an increasingly politically divided America.

Just as it did in the 1970s, the forcefulness of her work continues to make both viewers and the art world stop and pay attention. She has had solo exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Tate Modern in London and elsewhere. She has also created permanent installations including the New York City AIDS Memorial. A 2014 show at New York’s Cheim & Read featured oil-on-linen canvases based on declassified government files pertaining to detainees from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

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