Jenny Holzer: at the Aria in Las Vegas
I’m a Jenny Holzer fan from way back. When I was living in New York City in the 90’s her trademark phrases popped on the theatre marquees along 42nd Street during that magic year or two when Times Square transitioned from one extreme to the other—grimy gritty to sanitized pretty—and a public art project called “Creative Time” took over the neighborhood, visually at least.
She’s a distinctive artist whose medium essentially is words. They are shaped into phrases, sentences, even discourses, and presented in different ways over the years. You can call it poetry I suppose, words crafted as art. But the medium is equally as important as the message here. The work is sometimes quite personal and introspective, other times very broad, political, even polemical.
One of the reasons Holzer’s work resonates with me is that I love the simple power of language to evoke thought and feelings. Her early pieces include words in all caps italics of a generic serif font, offset printed en masse on pink paper—the Tate Museum describes this, completely deadpan, as an “unlimited edition”!
It’s been exciting to see Holzer’s work evolve from simple words on paper to marquees and signs, from early scrolling LED displays to complex sculptural forms crafted from light. She is a master at using emerging technology as a tool to expand on her core concept, transcending the constraints of the paper page and static sign.
Over the years I’ve seen her pieces in several museums but also installed in surprising places, like tucked away at Schipol Airport. In April 2019 I was at a tech industry event at the Aria Hotel in Las Vegas. It’s a huge place, you walk a quarter of a mile to get anywhere, so I hiked to the ride share pickup point at “North Valet” entrance and stumbled across this:
“Truisms” by Jenny Holzer, 2010, an installation at the Aria Hotel North Valet station, Las Vegas.
It’s huge, sinuous, snaking around the driveway where ride shares and taxis pick up and drop off while valets hustle to park and fetch vehicles. It floats and is transparent. It’s absolutely stunning.
You never know what a Jenny Holzer piece will look like, but it always speaks to you, has something to say. It’s fascinating for a body of work to be instantly recognizable not because of its specific visual attributes but rather the concept behind it.
In a piece like this the long sentences are there for you to process if you can catch them, but it also works as a series of single words that stand alone (see the gallery of images below). It’s interesting that the photos of this piece on Holzer’s website are framed tightly on single short words, disregarding the location.
Here’s a video on Facebook that gives a feel for the movement, there are also others posted on YouTube I recommend watching to get a better feel for the impressive technical accomplishment of a curved, winding, transparent lighted sign running 24/7.
At the end of the day though, it’s the words, the ideas, that makes the piece.
Note: The Aria Hotel has a bit of a modern fine art theme and features prominently a great Nancy Rubins sculpture as well as, according to their website, work by Maya Lin, Claes Oldenburg, Frank Stella, Henry Moore, and James Turrell. If you have to go to Las Vegas, it’s worth checking out this piece and some of the other work as well.
