Artist and wordsmith Jenny Holzer’s unexpected show in Somerset

Date
17 July 2015

You would be forgiven for thinking Jenny Holzer’s hard-hitting work and guerrilla tactics would seem incongruous in the English countryside. Somerset is an unlikely setting for the American artist whose first public works Truisms began as posters dotted around Manhattan in the late 70s where, among many things, she first told the world “There’s a fine line between information and propaganda.” A few years later her plea to be saved from ourselves blazed above New York’s capitalist heart in Times Square: “Protect me from what I want.”

For the better part of 40 years, she has used inflammatory language to address power structures and repressed carnal desire through posters, billboards, television, monumental projections, electronic signs and her signature LED signs. In one of her most political turns yet, her new exhibition spanning 30 years of work takes on the underside of the American secret services against the idyllic backdrop of Hauser & Wirth’s Somerset space.

All five gallery spaces – some sunlit, others half dark with the eerie glow of Holzer’s LEDs – are handed over to the exhibition. Ranging from earlier work including Truisms to grave new pieces drawing on criminal investigation reports, Softer Targets is a show that demonstrates the restraint of Holzer’s aesthetic with the passion of her politics.

Softer Targets is showing at Hauser & Wirth Somerset until 1 November.

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Jenny Holzer: Hanging, 2014 © 2014 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY Photo: Jake Forney

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Jenny Holzer: Softer Targets, Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 2015 © Jenny Holzer Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Ken Adlard

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Jenny Holzer: Shifting to Softer Targets, 2014-15 (detail). © 2014 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

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Jenny Holzer: Selection from Survival: Die fast and quiet, 2006. © 2006 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

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Jenny Holzer: Purple, 2008. © 2008 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

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Alexander Hawkins

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