The photo shows the work “Blue Purple Tilt” (2007) as seen in the Tate Modern Museum of Art in London 2011. I had the pleasure of viewing this art last week, and I found the combination of bright colors and words to be hypnotic. As one looks at the piece, words form and fall in horizontal lines. Each horizontal line carries it’s own phrase, falling and recombining on it’s own schedule. Learn more by clicking on this link Jenny Holzer.
Artist’s statement from the website at the Tate…
“American artist Jenny Holzer examines the political, philosophical and narrative possibilities of language.
BLUE PURPLE TILT…consists of seven double-sided vertical LED signs. Its scale emphasises that this is a sculptural object in its own right. Indeed, the viewer’s response may be shaped as much by the hypnotic glow of the letters streaming smoothly or flashing abruptly as it is by the words themselves.
The texts have been selected from previous series by Holzer, and can be seen as a retrospective of her early work. They include theTruisms, a collection of aphoristic phrases which the artist has described as ‘distilled beliefs’, encapsulating different world-views. The Survival Series were more aggressive in tone, while each of the Inflammatory Essayswas a 100-word statement of extreme political or religious belief. The Lamentations were originally presented on stone sarcophagi, and represent the thoughts of a number of characters facing death.
Jenny Holzer was born in Ohio in 1950. She lives and works in New York State.”