Featured White Papers
- Oct. 14th: Simplified IT with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) (ZDNet)
- PCI DSS therapy for the smaller retailer (McAfee)
- The rise of Web commuting (Citrix Online)
Content provided in partnership with
Jenny Holzer at Cheim & Read - New York - Brief Article
Art in America, Feb, 2002 by Susan Harris
Ascending to a height of almost 25 feet, the four towering LED signs in Jenny Holzer's Blue Spike produced an awe-inspiring, chapel-like environment that was as eloquently appropriate for the inaugural exhibition of Cheim & Read's new space as it was for the post-9/11 world into which we had just been thrust.
As in the best of her works, the physical and formal aspects of Holzer's three new large pieces were dictated by, and in turn emphasized, the gallery's architecture--in particular, the spectacularly soaring ceilings. Holzer's signature LEDs inhabited the space as if they were part of the gallery design itself; Blue Spike, for example, gracefully rose from the floor and disappeared seamlessly into the ceiling. Drawing viewers into the first gallery, the syncopated lines of electric-blue text ran up the front and back of each spike, suffusing the room with color. On the ceiling of the second gallery, Yellow Rafters consisted of words on 13 horizontal LEDs that spanned the skylight aperture in streams of light moving at speeds which varied in a complex choreography of computer-programmed rhythms. Inserted as a tympanum into the skylight of the rear gallery, Red Brace involved LED "beams" that gave the illusion of floating and moving up and down in space. The public experience of looking skyward--spellbound and lightheaded alongside strangers--contrasted with the startlingly private nature of the fast-moving texts that one had to strain to read.
"Oh," the title of the show, names Holzer's 13th text series. The works were presented last year at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, the capcMusee d'art contemporain, Bordeaux and, most recently, at the Chapelle St. Louis de la Salpetriere in Paris. "Oh" features the voice of a mother as she described the love and anxiety she feels for her daughter, alongside passages about adolescent sexuality, rape and incest. But it lacks the impact and indispensability of Holzer's earlier texts. Having evolved from a political voice with an apocalyptic urgency in her 1977 "Truisms" toward one that is now unapologetically personal and female, Holzer's newest poetry seemed secondary to the overall visual impression of the electronics and sculptural forms in space. Yet as she continues to develop her electronic media- and language-based art, she nonetheless defies categorization as an '80s artist by demonstrating a masterful facility at integrating sculpture, technology, color and architecture into optically stunning public presentations.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
