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| Jenny Holzer, 'Blue Purple Tilt', Illuminated LED Signs X 7, 2007 |
I met my friend and fellow artist, Andrew Smith again, in Birmingham, the other day. It was an enjoyable day of chewing the fat,
(and falafels), which also involved taking in a couple of rewarding
exhibitions. Amongst those was American
conceptual artist, Jenny Holzer’s ‘Artist Room’ at mac Birmingham. Although minimal (if elgant) in physical
content, the exhibit contains a wealth of artistic/intellectual content. My hunch is it would actually repay repeat
visits, which isn’t bad for what might, at first glance, appear to be merely
two ‘pieces’ in a single room.
Those two pieces
comprise of illuminated LED arrays, along which texts continually chase. They’re the kind of thing one might encounter
in a transport hub, stock exchange or public space (such as New York’s Times
Square, for instance), and reflect Holzer’s habitual attempts to present
potentially challenging Art content via more traditionally utilitarian or
commercial delivery systems. At one end
of the gallery, six such parallel display units are arranged, vertically in the
frontal plane - but also angled back to the wall (entitled, 'Blue Purple Tilt'). The same textual content scrolls along each of
these six bands, whilst fluctuating coloured light illuminates the wall behind and
immediate surroundings. The second piece ('Floor') forms a single, longer array, extending horizontally along the floor - and
appearing to emerge from (or disappear into) one wall. In both cases, text is orientated vertically
in terms of each physical light box – meaning that, in this piece, one must
tilt one’s head to the side, or view the piece end-on, to easily read the
scrolling text.
However, as already
intimated, the real meat of the show is in the textual content – itself a wide selection
of Holzer’s earlier text works, be they polemical or of a more
personal/emotional/autobiographical nature.
The radical and consciously feminist underpinnings of many of Holzer’s
‘messages’ are no secret. However, this
show’s essential function as compilation just emphasises how this material can
fluctuate between the direct, or even sloganeering, and the more obliquely
allusive. The negotiation of this
particular tightrope is something I’ve been considering in relation to my own ‘This S(c)eptic Isle’ work, of late. It also illuminates (literally) the potential
interrelationship between personal and ideological politics.
Would it be too
simplistic or stereotypical to attribute this ability to bring a distinct
emotional intelligence to bear upon conscious political analysis to a number of
leading contemporary female artists, I wonder?
In reality, one might hope that such binary distinctions between the
emotional/theoretical, or between female/female habits of thought in general,
might be rendered increasingly obsolete, as gender-based identities themselves
become seemingly ever more fluid.
Whatever the truth of this, Holzer herself shows no inclination to pull her
punches, with emotionally raw, sexually graphic, or polemically strident
elements all taking their place alongside more poetic or ambiguous
material. Andrew and I both relished the
way she will sometimes present a series of unrelated, superficially simplistic
truisms in a direct, seemingly relativistic manner – leaving the reader to
unpack the layers of meaning or potential connections which may or may not be
there.
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Jenny Holzer, (L.) 'Blue Purple Tilt', (R.) 'Floor' Illuminated LED Signs, mac Birmingham,
August 2017 |
In fact, to say
the main point of Holzer’s work is in the content isn’t strictly true, and actually,
that understanding of the ‘work’ required on the part of the viewer is key
here. As with all the best Conceptual
art (I sometimes consider ‘philosophical’ a preferable label), the real rewards are to
be found in considering the relationship between what may be said (or
suggested), and the manner in which it is being said. It all goes back to all that old McLuanesque
stuff about medium and message, I suppose, but in an ever more mediated
culture, and one in which supposed
‘truths’ and ‘facts’ are no longer regarded as imalleable. Context and our ability or inability to
absorb and evaluate it are more relevant than ever when considering our
relationship with any stream of information.
Holzer’s work is, above all, concerned with the nature of delivery
systems, and how they colour (again, literally), our apprehension of the
material they carry.
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| Jenny Holzer, 'Floor', Illuminated LED Sign, 2017 |
It seems to me
that the brilliant (and again) trick she pulls with these chasing text pieces
is to make them quite, but not completely difficult, to read. Our familiarity with such kinetic, matrix-based
displays is that they require a certain amount of work to decipher. In common usage, the trade-off is between the
expenditure of this effort, and the often bald or simplistic nature of the
information delivered. Such scrolling or
flashing messages are, by their very nature, fleeting, but then, so often are
the meanings they impart. They imply a
temporary relationship with information, as well as a temporal one.
Holzer uses all
near-subliminal tricks of the medium to upset this customary interaction. These include an almost-too-fast-to read
pacing and distinctly torrential relentlessness of the texts, the gimmicky
programming of colliding, overlapping or flickering phrases, their integration
within potentially conflicting, colour-shifting background patterns, and even the
simple expedient of awkwardly rotating characters by 90 degrees. It all serves to make us work harder than we
might choose to extract meaning or to arrive at a possible interpretation. The retention and satisfactory digestion of
Holzer’s words are rendered near impossible.
We are forced to confront, in a seemingly inappropriate manner, the kind
of profound or emotionally resonant material traditionally reflected upon over
repeat visits to the printed page. It
feels like an accelerated form of philosophy - but equally, as a philosophical
interrogation of the nature of acceleration.
One consequence
of all this might be that the disengaged viewer might spend only a few seconds
with the show, before losing heart, searching for coffee, or returning to a
different illuminated display of their own.
Another is to abandon the impossible task of keeping abreast of the
ceaseless parade of writings, and to relax into the enjoyable ambience of
coloured light and shifting shadows. My
own experience became one of oscillating between the Textual engagement and
non-specific immersion, in the event.
Once we learned from a gallery attendant that the complete textual cycles
take 20 and 24 hours respectively, a third option of dropping in and out over
repeat visits felt like the most feasible one of all. Geography, time and fuel prices make that
impossible for me, but it does make sense of Holzer’s habit, over the years, of
placing her work in the street, where one might regularly pass by - or in very
public spaces to which one might repeatedly return.
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Dan Flavin, 'Untitled (To Don Judd, Colourist) 4', Illuminated Fluorescent
Tubes, 1987. 'Dan Flavin: It Is What It Is And It Ain't Nothing Else',
Ikon, Birmingham, April - June 2016 |
I’m reminded of
my vist to Ikon’s much-lauded Dan Flavin exhibition - also in Birmingham, last
year. I’d approached it with much
anticipation, but came away somewhat underwhelmed in the event. I’d enjoyed it initially, but had a lingering sensation of having partaken
of thin gruel, if you will. Superficially,
in terms of presentation, at least - Holzer employs similar tools of minimalist
formality, and of coloured light and its effect upon the physical
environment. However, Flavin ultimately
supplies, in his own words, the sense that 'It Is What It Is And It Ain’t Nothing Else'.
Holzer’s injection of time, and
of course, words, into the mix does exactly the opposite.
Any good French philosopher of the twentieth
century can explain at tedious length just how slippery is the relationship
between the ‘form’ of a word, and its freight of information or meaning. Add in the intangibility of words expressed
purely through the medium of shifting photons, and the philosophical
possibilities multiply even further. Holzer’s work may tend towards the insubstantial
(her grandest statements are simply huge projections), or be limited in extent
(as at mac), but dig vertically through the strata of possible meaning it
implies, and it starts to feel like something altogether different.
