Figure 4
Jenny Holzer
b. 1950, Callipolis, Ohio
Unex Sign #1
1983, Spectacolor machine with moving graphics,
30 1/2 x 116 1/2 x 11 5/8
The Information Age bombards us with advertisements, e-mails, faxes, and other language-laden media. Jenny Holzer’s Unex Sign #1 could easily be mistaken for one of the inneumerable electronic signboards, anonymously transmitting ads and public-service announcements. But her light-emmitting diode (LED) machine is programmed to send messages of an unexpected nature, communicating private thoughts normally deemed inappropriate for public discourse. The 44 thought-provoking, ironic, sometimes disturbing statements that flash across the screen question our cultural values and stereotypes about class, ethnicity, genders, and age.
Unex Sign #1 was among the first pieces Holzer composed with LED technology. State-of-the-art in 1983, the LED was for Holzer, “the medium of authority” and “an accurate reflection about the world in which we live.” The appropriation of this technology marked a major breakthrough in her work, enabling her to teansform her eariler uniform black-and-white texts on posters and billboards into mesmerizing electronic displays of images and letters in different sizes, typefaces, and colors that flash, move, appear, and disappear at varying rates.
As electronic commmunication dominates our society, we are becoming increasingly dependent on automated technologies. Holzer’s urgent messages about human survival are poignant and even more affecting because she speaks through the very technology upon which we depend.
–Beth Venn and Cathy Kimball
Photograph: ©1998, Whitney Museum of American Art
Artwork © Jenny Holzer.