Jenny Holzer at Blenheim Palace

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The struggle to find new ways to flaunt text, to sediment it as a thing, transactable. at least instagrammable. Holzer's mimicking the advertorial strategy, of programmatic infiltration into, its ability to evolve new forms of advertising, ways to address you. "The main focus of her work is the delivery of words and ideas in public spaces." And Holzer has for years developed a rainbow of means to do so blinking. The recent resurgence along with Kruger as a voice and means for political activism - which, activism understandably, needs little in the way of grey area - seem odd.  Holzer truisms had seemed almost koan like in their ability to use a sentence as a slogan to defeat sense. A protest sign must almost violently means what it means. It never really felt as though we were supposed to believe in what the truisms were saying, their rapid fire semantic blugeon and mass strategies seemed to exist as a question of how we were left to interpret something so explicit already telling us something. Now it seems in our political moment we are asked to maybe ask and believe in their bludgeon. Or maybe we've just been conditioned to not trust any text in public.


See too: Matt Keegan, Kay Rosen at Grazer Kunstverein

Group Show at Sprüth Magers

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The Sherman tank was most numerous for the United States proving to be reliable and mobile. Despite being outclassed by German mediums and heavy, Sherman was cheaper to produce and available in greater numbers. Thousands were distributed, stressing reliability, ease of production, durability, standardization of parts and ammunition in a limited number of variants, along with moderate size and weight. These factors, combined with Sherman's then-superior armament, outclassed other's and Sherman went on to be produced in large numbers, spearheaded by the Western alliance. The relative ease of production allowed huge numbers of Sherman to be manufactured, and significant investment allowed returning service. These factors combined to give the American numerical superiority. Despite its deficiencies to other superior German as well as other American tanks, Sherman won the war through its adaptation to modernization techniques.

Jenny Holzer at Cheim & Reid



The Truisms were always a form of censorship, cliches to terminate thought. Speaking at you, unhearing, they acted as gag, a policing in “sensible” thinking. 2004, in wake of wars, Holzer’s newfound “silence” could be an act of protest, an act of being too sad to tell, a fear of laughing for never being able to stop,* an aphasia through trauma, or tempting psycho-analysis of painting’s historical inability to speak, the repression of flatness and tautologic “it is what it is” existentials. That seems to be what they want, why else would they look “Malevich;” as if to chide painting for its apolitic, for its not speaking.
Interesting though, to see a painting speak. Particularly in such directness, as not an art game, of such violence, of a painting saying: “You can see some marks because of belting even now.”

* "I, for one, don’t, and not because I am depressed, but because I find this historical period largely so laughable that were I to start laughing I am afraid I would not be able to stop. I remember how when high on marijuana my ex-girlfriend would giggle virtually at everything on and on. I never had this kind of extended laughter on the few instances I smoked pot. Yet I am sure that were I to start laughing in my normal state of consciousness, my laughter would certainly surpass hers. As for her, there was no danger of her starting laughing and not managing to stop, dying of it: she did not find present-day societies that laughable. All I ask of this world to which I have already given several books is that it become less laughable, so that I would be able to laugh again without dying of it—and that it does this soon, before my somberness becomes second nature. This era has made me somber not only through all the barbarisms and genocides it has perpetuated, but also through being so laughable. Even in this period of the utmost sadness for an Arab in general, and an Iraqi in specific, I fear dying of laughter more than of melancholic suicide, and thus I am more prone to let down my guard when it comes to being sad than to laughing at laughable phenomena."

-Jalal Toufic, “If you prick us, do we not bleed?”