"Jenny Holzer: PROTECT PROTECT" at the Whitney Museum of American Art

By: Ashley Young

 

Jenny Holzer, PALM LEFT 000113, 2007, oil on linen. Courtesy: Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers.

 

          Most famous for her “Truisms,” Jenny Holzer has continued, over the last three decades, to elicit intense emotional reactions through her use of text.  Recently, she has expanded her most commonly known work, street-pasted signs, benches and LED screens, to include oil paintings in the style of Andy Warhol.  In the exhibition “PROTECT PROTECT,” at The Whitney Museum of American Art, the curator does an excellent job of mixing Holzer’s old and new work to create a dialogue about both politics and personal issues between all of the pieces.

          The exhibition opens with the first-ever LED piece created to lay flat on the floor.  Entitled For Chicago (2008), this work combines all of the artist’s most famous texts: Truisms, Inflammatory Essays, Living, Survival, Under a Rock, Laments, Mother and Child, Wat, Lustmord, Erlauf, Arno, Blue, and Oh, and serves as an abridged introduction to her large body of work.  For Chicago layers the different texts and moves them along the screen at different speeds, giving the viewer a real sense of the incredible variation and many layers to Holzer’s practice.  The second piece the viewer comes upon, PROTECT PROTECT deep purple (2007), is the first example of oil painting seen in the show. The title work of the exhibit, this piece is comprised of reproduced plans detailing certain aspects of the Iraq war. 

        The second room of the exhibition includes three LED works.  Interlaced like fingers, Blue Cross (2008) and Green Purple Cross (2008), are installed as one in a corner of the room, above the viewers’ head. Together, these pieces create an emotional dialogue about loss, death, and the feeling of violation. This work, along with Monument 2008, which immediately suggests the combined forms of Donald Judd and Dan Flavin with its stacked composition and emanating light, fills the white cube gallery with deeply saturated color. Finally, the last room of the exhibition showcases an entire wall of redacted handprints hung in the style of Warhol’s Soup Cans, creating this sense of crime and life as some sort of commodity. 

          The most compelling works in this show are the new oil paintings. For these, Holzer has gathered numerous documents from the National Security Archive: autopsy reports from prisoners in the Middle East, letters from both soldier’s and soldier’s families accused of war crimes, handprints from U.S. military personal accused of crimes, and images from a military PowerPoint presentation that detail strategies for the initial invasion of Iraq. Referred to as redaction paintings, these works take their name from the sensitive material the government has blacked out of the documents in order to de-classify them.   

          Entering into “PROTECT PROTECT”, I was not prepared for such a strong statement on the state of our country in relation to the Iraq war.  I was, however, moved and more impressed than ever with Holzer’s work.  Run, don’t walk, to this exhibition before it closes on May 31^st , because it is one of the most strongly installed and effective shows that has been in New York recently.

Jenny Holzer, PROTECT PROTECT at the Whitney Museum of American Art runs through May 31^st

 

The Whitney Museum of American Art

945 Madison Avenue

Museum Hours: W-Thurs, 11am-6pm, F, 1pm-9pm,

Sat and Sun, 11am-6pm

Museum Website: www.whitney.org

Artist Website: www.jennyholzer.com

Comments

[Sarah]

This is a wonderful review and no, indeed, I didn't know that Holzer painted. There is a good interview with Holzer in this month's US Elle. OK, I'm slightly ashamed that I know that but anyway...

[Sarah B.]

I didn't know that Holzer painted either, although I'm not surprised. I've never been a huge fan of her work, but I do like her LED pieces. I haven't seen more than one or two of her works in any one place before, and am interested in the effect that so many of them in one space, even spread out over a few rooms, would have.

[j.block]

Holzer aways leaves you with some sort of impact, one of the first shows of hers that I saw was at Mary Boone when she was on W.Broadway. The entire gallery interior was used as a canvas. Text and image ran from floor to ceiling in a jumble, it was a total immersion into the media.

[Mbts]

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