November 25, 2007
For 30 of her 57 years, Jenny Holzer has been one of this country's most influential artists. That's why it makes such good sense for this piece of hers, called "For SAAM," to be the first work specially commissioned for the restored Lincoln Gallery in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Holzer's signature medium has always been the English language, often with a dose of glowing light. "For SAAM" acts as a good summation of her art. A 28-foot-tall column of high-tech LEDs hangs from the museum's ceiling, like cascading Christmas lights corralled into a four-foot tube. A computer program makes those white diodes spell out texts borrowed from four of Holzer's earlier projects, sending their giant capital letters chasing across and up and down and all around the column. The speeding phrases range from the short and utterly opaque ("I SCAN YOU," "I BREATHE YOU") to her famous truisms ("A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE CAN GO A LONG WAY") to observations from daily life ("THE SMALLEST THING CAN MAKE SOMEBODY SEXUALLY UNAPPEALING. A MISPLACED MOLE OR PARTICULAR HAIR PATTERN CAN DO IT").
Where do your texts come from?
What's at SAAM is my writing that I use less and less all the time. But I haven't a clue where that comes from, other than my dark past, maybe.
I'm more likely to use programming to obscure my own text than text by others. Sometimes I want the piece to be something you watch and the language is almost subordinate; at other times I want the writing to be quite possible to read and to get. Sometimes I want the programming to represent the impossibility of understanding; at other times, I want to lay things out because they need to be.
I've always admired [German artist Gerhard] Richter, who manages in his paintings to have content when he wants it, and then to have wonderful abstraction and all kinds of other formal qualities. This is what I'm after, though at times the balance is tilted one way or the other. I've always wanted to be able to present both, but I was less adventuresome earlier, so I went to content to help myself find my subjects. And then gradually, gradually, I've added the visual and the more overtly emotional.
ART: Photo of "For SAAM" by Gene Young - Smithsonian American Art Museum. Photo of Holzer by Nanda Lanfranco; WEB EDITOR: Julia Beizer - washingtonpost.com
