Jenny Holzer presented her first interior light projections in the United States. The projections transformed the enormous, seemingly empty gallery into an engaging and provocative meeting place flooded with words, bodies, and light. Also on view was a new series of paintings from declassified government documents, first shown, in part, at the 2007 Venice Biennale. Holzer's display of government documents, such as planning maps for the invasion of Iraq, revealed the bureaucratic administration of war through the cloud of paint and the weight of a looming installation.
For thirty years, Jenny Holzer has presented her astringent ideas, arguments, and sorrows in public places and international exhibitions. Her medium, whether formulated as a light projection, a plaque, an electronic sign, or a painting, is writing, and the public dimension is integral to the delivery of her work.
Whether in urban or rural settings, outdoors or inside, using her own writings or those of others, the ambition of each projection remains the same: “I show what I can with words in light and motion in a chosen place, and when I envelop the time needed, the space around, the noise, smells, the people looking at one another and everything before them, I have given what I know.”
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