Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer (b. 1950) is one of the most significant artists working today. She is known throughout the world for her LED installations, posters, paintings, and stoneworks exploring themes such as war, violence, abuse of power, idealism, and absurdity, which have been shown in numerous international exhibitions. The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen presents Holzer’s first major solo exhibition in Germany in more than a decade. She has conceived her show at K21 as an artwork itself, featuring key works from many different phases of her career, as well as new works devised specifically for K21 and the city of Düsseldorf. In keeping with Holzer’s deeply democratic approach, her works prompt viewers to grapple with conflicting perspectives and find their own empathic, open-minded positions in complex debates. This makes the exhibition—on view from March 11 to August 6, 2023—a public forum for discussions of current global challenges.

The director Susanne Gaensheimer says, “Global challenges are shaking up the world. At this crucial moment in time, we are pleased to present Jenny Holzer’s powerful, timeless, and politically engaging exhibition, which addresses war, corruption, and crime with ferocity and kindness.”

The K21 exhibition galleries offer a retrospective look at earlier stages of Holzer’s career, reinventing historic works with new technology and presentation. Holzer transforms the entire space with a poster wall installation featuring her iconic Truisms (1977–79) and Inflammatory Essays (1979–82). The show is further enriched by twenty-six stone benches, flickering LED signs, and early paintings from the 1980s, all bathed in a carefully programmed orchestra of lights. The exhibition incorporates some of Holzer’s work with graffiti artist Lady Pink. The two artists have collaborated a number of times since the early 1980s. On view here are vintage spray paintings as well as a new mural created specially for K21. Just as in the streets of New York City, where anonymous passersby left comments on Holzer’s posters with felt-tip pens, the poster installation in the museum becomes a site for artistic interaction. At Holzer’s invitation, stars of the German graffiti scene—ECB, FOOL, IBES, SMASH 137, MOSES & TAPS, and L. BOE—have applied text in their signature styles over her striking installation of posters. Extending 150 meters across the gallery walls, the writing creates new dialogue not only with Holzer’s posters, but also with the site-specific mural WAR-TORN (2023) in collaboration with Susan Meiselas and Lady Pink, and the LED sign UKRAINE (2023).

In K21’s light-filled Bel Etage galleries, Holzer presents twenty works from her “Redaction Painting” series, which she has been working on since 2005. The oil paintings and silk screens, some of which are leafed with precious metals, are based on declassified and redacted documents from US government agencies. They cover a wide range of subjects, including military operations in Iraq, torture in prison camps, and crimes against civilians. Her artistic strategy and adept use of the painter’s repertoire give rise to works that ride the line between documentation and subjective artistic expression. Conflicting attitudes and actions, secrecy, and democratic principles become the subject in this series. The atrocities of war, including rape in the former Yugoslavia, confront viewers in a sculpture made of human bones, stoneworks with carved inscriptions reflect the devastation in Poland during World War II, and an LED sign presents newly collected texts from the war in Ukraine. Holzer says, “The installation for the Bel Etage has to do with assaults and killing from World War II to the present invasion of Ukraine. It is meant as a reminder, a caution, and a protest.”

Outside the museum, Holzer has created new animations featuring texts from her “Truisms” and “Survival” series, that are on view on public signboards in Düsseldorf.

Explore our extensive multimedia digital booklet K+.

The exhibition is accompanied by the digital booklet K+ that provides multimedia insights into the individual creative phases of the artist as well as background information on the work and life of Jenny Holzer. Through QR codes at various stations within the exhibition space, K+ can be accessed via smartphone or tablet while visiting the exhibition.

Stay connected: Please check our website for regular updates on our program. For further information please contact: presse [​at​] kunstsammlung.de