Jenny Holzer Solo Exhibition @ DHC/ART

Old Montreal’s DHC/ART is hosting the work of text-based artist Jenny Holzer until November 14th, 2010. This solo exhibition features Holzer’s recent work and work from her Truisms (1977-79) series.

When one enters the DHC/ART, they find themselves in a room with declassified US government documents, made accessible though the Freedom of Information Act, blown up and silkscreened over canvases. The first declassified e-mail the gallery visitor reads is concerned with interrogation and torture techniques imposed by the US military. A disturbing tone is set for the rest of the visit. This e-mail correspondence is spread across several canvases. Our eyes trace over the black blocks that cover up what is still confidential to the unsettling descriptions of these interrogation techniques. Large maps are found on the adjacent and opposite walls. They feature plans of attack on Iraq and are coloured a haze of florescent pinks and purples, intentionally akin to the colour of bruised flesh. As one travels up the stairs to reach the other rooms of the exhibition, one travels further and further into these exposed truths. The second floor contains “Ribs” (2010). Text travels across each horizontal LED sign, the respective ribs, where testimonies of US soldiers and detainees are transcribed. The inconsistent movement of the LED signs is discomforting to say the least. I became slightly nauseas from the text’s movement and the information alike. This theme continues on the next floor with “Thorax” (2008). We are isolated in these small white-museum box rooms, left to encounter and negotiate the meanings of one LED projection per room. Our senses are disrupted in a similar vein to the goal of interrogation techniques applied to prisoners of war.

The final floor features additional declassified memos, e-mailes and testimonies silkscreened onto canvases. These canvases encircle a table low to the ground in the rooms centre. It is adorned with bones, arranged systematically. They do not appear in a memorializing way, rather numerical. Upon closer attention, metal tags inscribed with text can be found attached to select few bones. The tags, however, are not Holzer’s commemorative words but are instead the words of victims and offenders of sexual crimes committed against women during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia (1992-1995).

The exhibition carries into the second of the DHC/ART buildings. In it, the one-liners from Holzer’s LED sign series Truisms (1977-79) are featured. Truisms once infiltrated the advertisement space in New York City with its messages that do not urge one to buy, but instead to comply with ones hearts desires and Holzer’s advice for life. Each of the two works occupies a different room. Trying to keep up with all the messages running across each LED sign is dizzying as the flashes of contrasting colours alternate, appear and reappear from their tracks. One can become entranced when aiming to absorb as many of the consecutive statements as possible. The ever-changing text dislocates our moral codes as we read the proverbs laid out by Holzer.

Jenny Holzer’s chilling exhibition plays with language, censorship and our senses. Upon leaving the exhibition, one can feel the freedom of being exposed to natural light, removed from the hypnotizing texts Jenny Holzer has challenged us with.

DHC/ART: http://www.dhc-art.org/