GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Jenny Holzer rose to international prominence as a socially and politically oriented artist in the 1980s. With her populist posters, T-shirts, plaques, and signature LED electronic display signboards, Holzer has engaged, provoked, and challenged audiences that reach well beyond the walls of the museum or gallery. From her earliest series, Truisms (1977-79) - posters of forty to sixty aphorisms arranged alphabetically and posted around SoHo, New York, Jenny Holzer has used words as images and language as a medium. Her messages - deadpan aphorisms to dark meditations about the human condition - are presented in an authoritative, anonymous, often nongendered voice. In this way, she brings our most private thoughts on sex, life, death, identity, and disaster into the public realm.
I Am a Man was part of Holzer's installation in the 1987 Documenta VIII exhibition in Kassel, Germany. Like all her LED signboards, it is clear, direct, and accessible. It combines the familiar and unfamiliar, the expected and the unexpected - a commercial medium that announces, advertises and entertains in urban streets and sports arenas has a serious message: "I AM A MAN. I ENTER SPACE BECAUSE IT EMPTIES ME. I CHASE PEOPLE AROUND THE HOUSE...I WILL KILL YOU FOR WHAT YOU MIGHT DO." The words move upward; their color, rhythm, and speed change, embodying the power of the surrounding technological landscape to manipulate and alter consciousness.
Adapted from
Suzanne Weaver, "Jenny Holzer, I Am a Man," in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection, ed. Suzanne Kotz (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1997), 299.
NOTES
Exhibition - Concentrations 10. Added object number to this exhibition record, HAB 1/10/2018
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Cultures
Geography
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
Until 1988: Jenny Holzer (b. 1950)
1988: Dallas Museum of Art, purchased from Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York.
Notes:
The main source for this provenance is the object record card in the Collections Records object file.
AUDIO ASSETS
- 13313324: UMO, Listen to a lecture by Jenny Holzer on "Crossing Boundaries"
VIDEO ASSETS
IMAGE ASSETS
WEB RESOURCES
SFMOMA~See more about Jenny Holzer's I Am a Man.
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
FUN FACTS
TEACHING IDEAS
RULES
apply to objects where number equals 1988.57
Category
rules_operator
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General Description
Jenny Holzer rose to international prominence as a socially and politically oriented artist in the 1980s. With her populist posters, T-shirts, plaques, and signature LED electronic display signboards, Holzer has engaged, provoked, and challenged audiences that reach well beyond the walls of the museum or gallery. From her earliest series, Truisms (1977-79) - posters of forty to sixty aphorisms arranged alphabetically and posted around SoHo, New York, Jenny Holzer has used words as images and language as a medium. Her messages - deadpan aphorisms to dark meditations about the human condition - are presented in an authoritative, anonymous, often nongendered voice. In this way, she brings our most private thoughts on sex, life, death, identity, and disaster into the public realm.
I Am a Man was part of Holzer's installation in the 1987 Documenta VIII exhibition in Kassel, Germany. Like all her LED signboards, it is clear, direct, and accessible. It combines the familiar and unfamiliar, the expected and the unexpected - a commercial medium that announces, advertises and entertains in urban streets and sports arenas has a serious message: "I AM A MAN. I ENTER SPACE BECAUSE IT EMPTIES ME. I CHASE PEOPLE AROUND THE HOUSE...I WILL KILL YOU FOR WHAT YOU MIGHT DO." The words move upward; their color, rhythm, and speed change, embodying the power of the surrounding technological landscape to manipulate and alter consciousness.
Adapted from
Suzanne Weaver, "Jenny Holzer, I Am a Man," in Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection, ed. Suzanne Kotz (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1997), 299.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
Notes
Exhibition - Concentrations 10. Added object number to this exhibition record, HAB 1/10/2018
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Cultures
Geography
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
Until 1988: Jenny Holzer (b. 1950)
1988: Dallas Museum of Art, purchased from Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York.
Notes:
The main source for this provenance is the object record card in the Collections Records object file.
AUDIO ASSETS
- 13313324: UMO, Listen to a lecture by Jenny Holzer on "Crossing Boundaries"
VIDEO ASSETS
rules
Apply To
Objects
number
Equals
1988.57
source file
object_notes_4_a-0128.xml.nores