Jenny Holzer (born July 29, 1950) is an American conceptual artist. Holzer lives and works in Hoosick Falls, New York.

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1 Jenny Holzer r edit data Jenny Holzer (born July 29, 1950) is an American conceptual artist. Holzer lives and works in Hoosick Falls, New York. Holzer belongs to the feminist branch of a generation of artists that emerged around 1980, looking for new ways to make narrative or commentary an implicit part of visual objects. Her contemporaries include Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Charlesworth, and Louise Lawler. Holzer is mostly known for her large-scale public displays that include billboard advertisements, projections on buildings and other architectural structures, as well as illuminated electronic displays. The main focus of her work is the use of words and ideas in public space. Originally utilizing street posters, LED signs became her most visible medium, though her diverse practice incorporates a wide array of media including bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches and footstools, stickers, T- shirts, paintings, photographs, sound, video, light projection, the Internet, and a Le Mans race car.

2 Holzer wrote texts herself for a long time between 1977 and However since 1993, she has been mainly working with texts written by others. Some of these are literary texts by great authors such as the Polish Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska, Henri Cole (USA), Elfriede Jelinek (Austria), Fadhil Al-Azawi (Iraq), Yehuda Amichai (Israel) and Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine). She also uses texts from different contexts, such as passages from de-classified US Army documents from the war in Iraq. For example, a large LED work presents excerpts from the minutes of interrogations of American soldiers who had committed human rights violations and war crimes in Abu Ghraib, making what was once secret public. Holzer's works often speak of violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, power, war and death. Her main concern is to enlighten, bringing to light something thought in silence and meant to remain hidden. (less) Barbara Kruger American Designer, Graphic Artist, and Photographer Movements and Styles: Conceptual Art, Feminist Art, Postmodernism "Do you know why language manifests itself the way it does in my work? It's because I understand short attention spans."

3 Synopsis Barbara Kruger is best known for her silkscreen prints where she placed a direct and concise caption across the surface of a found photograph. Her prints from the 1980s cleverly encapsulated the era of "Reaganomics" with tongue-in-cheek satire; especially in a work like (Untitled) I shop therefore I am (1987), ironically adopted by the mall generation as their mantra. As Kruger's career progressed, her work expanded to include site-specific installations as well as video and audio works, all the while maintaining a firm basis in social, cultural, and political critique. Since the 1990s, she has also returned to magazine design, incorporating her confrontational phrases and images into a wholly different realm from the art world. Associated with postmodern Feminist art as well as Conceptual art, Kruger combines tactics like appropriation with her characteristic wit and direct commentary in order to communicate with the viewer and encourage the interrogation of contemporary circumstances. Key Ideas The economy of Kruger's use of image and text facilitates a direct communication with the viewer. Within a short declarative statement, she synthesizes a critique about society, the economy, politics, gender, and culture. Kruger merges the slick facade of graphic design with unexpected phrases in order to catch the viewer's attention using the language of contemporary publications, grapic design, or magazines. Rather than attempting to sell a product, her works aim to sell an idea to the viewer that is meant to instigate a reconsideration of one's immediate context.

4 Kruger appropriates images from their original context in magazines and sets them as the background against which she emblazons confrontational phrases. From her use of clearly legible font to her jarring palette of red, white, and black, each element of the final artwork is crucial to its effectiveness as both an artistic expression and a protest against facets of postmodern life. Childhood Barbara Kruger was born in Newark, New Jersey in Her mother was a legal secretary and her father a chemical technician. An only child, Kruger attended Weequahic High School in Newark, and enjoyed what was by all accounts a typical middle-class upbringing. She was accepted to Syracuse University as an undergraduate, where she enrolled in a number of art and design classes. After only one year at Syracuse, Kruger moved to New York City to take more advanced art and design classes at the Parsons School of Design. Untitled (You invest in the divinity of the masterpiece) (1982) Artwork Images Artwork description & Analysis: For this early work Kruger appropriated a portion of Michelangelo's renowned Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco notably the image of God's hand touching Adam's at the moment of creation. Through her use of the pronoun "You," Kruger directly addresses the viewer, inviting them to impose their own narrative on Michelangelo's masterpiece. The inference of personal responsibility in this work, however abstract, is a consistent theme through Kruger's work. She suggests that all of us are somehow implicated

5 in a historical narrative; in this case, that of Western ideology, society, and art and as viewers of works of art, our opinion about the importance or role of the work of art is influenced, and sometimes even predetermined, by our own religious or philosophical, cultural, and ideological beliefs. Participating in postmodernism's ideal of questioning the progression and narrative of modernism, Kruger uses this piece to help the viewer acknowledge their role and agency when viewing art. Photostat - Museum of Modern Art, New Yor Untitled (Your body is a battleground) (1989) Artwork Images Artwork description & Analysis: Kruger designed this print for the 1989 reproductive rights protest, the March for Women's Lives, in Washington, D.C. Utilizing her signature red, black, and white palette, the woman's face is split along a vertical axis, showing the photographic positive and negative sides, suggesting a highly simplified inner struggle of

6 good versus evil. The political and social implications of the work are self evident, but Kruger emphasizes the directness of her sentiment by having her subject stare straight ahead through the print, frankly addressing the viewer through both her gaze and the words emblazoned across her face. The message unequivocally addresses the issue of the continued feminist struggle, connecting the physical body of female viewers to the contemporary conditions that necessitate the feminist protest. Kruger's slick graphic aesthetic and use of dramatic found imagery also place this work within the purview of postmodernism, tying it not only to contemporary critique, but to the larger social and cultural responses within the period. Photo silkscreen on vinyl - The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica From Our Sponsor Installation view of self-titled solo exhibition at Mary Boone Gallery, NYC (1991) Artwork Images Artwork description & Analysis: For her third

7 solo show at Mary Boone Gallery, Kruger transformed the gallery space into pure experience, with wall to wall and floor to ceiling displays in black, white, and red. Upon entering the gallery, visitors were greeted with the following text, printed in white letters on a vermillion background: "All that seemed beneath you is speaking to you now. All that seemed deaf hears you. All that seemed dumb knows what's on your mind. All that seemed blind sees through you." This confrontational epithet set the tone for the entire installation, which implicates the viewers in Kruger's critique of the dynamics of power in the early 1990s. Kruger used bold white text within a virtual sea of red, pitting a flood of language against billboard-sized images that collide on the walls. Two images of a child's screaming face confront the viewer with the phrase "All violence is the illustration of a pathetic stereotype," while a sensational image, tucked in the back room of the gallery, portrays a naked woman on a cross wearing a gas mask, emblazoned with the words, "It's our pleasure to disgust you," a brazen challenge aimed at the conservative elements of American society. The hostile tone of Kruger's language, as well

8 as the nature of the entire installation, is intended to activate viewers' emotions in order to consider the circumstances that led Kruger to make such incisive statements. Her first foray into site-specific installation, this exhibition represented a major departure from her earlier two-dime Carrie Mae Weems Biography Considered one of the most influential contemporary American artists, Carrie Mae Weems has investigated family relationships, cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems, and the consequences of power. Determined as ever to enter the picture both literally and metaphorically Weems has sustained an on-going dialogue within contemporary discourse for over thirty years. During this time,

9 Carrie Mae Weems has developed a complex body of art employing photographs, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation, and video. In a New York Times review of her retrospective, Holland Cotter wrote, Ms. Weems is what she has always been, a superb image maker and a moral force, focused and irrepressible." Weems has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at major national and international museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Frist Center for Visual Art, Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville, Spain. Weems has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including the prestigious Prix de Roma, The National Endowment of the Arts, The Alpert, The Anonymous was a Woman, and The Tiffany Awards. In 2012, Weems was presented with one of the first US Department of State s Medals of Arts in recognition for her commitment to the State Department s Art in Embassies program. In 2013 Weems received the MacArthur Genius grant as well as the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation s Lifetime Achievement Award. She has also received the BET Honors Visual Artist award, the Lucie Award for Fine Art photography, was one of four artists honored at the Guggenheim s 2014 International Gala, a recipient of the ICP Spotlights Award from the International Center of Photography, The WEB Dubois Award from Harvard University, as well as Honorary Degrees from: California College of the Arts, Colgate University, Bowdoin College, the School of Visual Arts and Syracuse University. She is represented in public and private collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and The Tate Modern, London. Weems has been represented by Jack Shainman Gallery since 2008, and is currently Artist in Residence at the Park Avenue Armory. She lives in Syracuse, New York, with her husband Jeffrey Hoone who is Executive Director of Light Wor