Biennale di Venezia

This exhibition, with work by Jenny Holzer, was originally installed in the United States Pavilion at the 44th Venice Biennale in Italy in 1990. Chief Curator Michael Auping, as United States Commissioner, organized the exhibition, which won the Leone d’Oro (Golden Lion) award for Best Pavilion.

The Buffalo installation was the first United States presentation of Holzer’s recent work and included a number of works from the Biennale installation, as well as several new works designed for the Albright-Knox’s exhibition space.

Since her first series of public art texts, TRUISMS, appeared as broadsides throughout New York in 1977, Holzer has employed the medium of language in a variety of formats to convey her artistic messages. Her texts were inscribed on Italian marble tile floors as well as on a series of light-emitting dicode (LED) signs, the electronic message boards for which she is best known. The Buffalo installation was the first United States presentation of Holzer’s work. Following the 1990 Biennale, the exhibition traveled to Städtische Kunsthalle in Dusseldorf, Germany, and to the Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark.

Born in Gallipolis, Ohio, in 1950, Holzer attended Duke University and the University of Chicago before completing a bachelor of fine arts degree at Ohio University in Athens. She entered the master of fine arts program at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1975, where she began her first work with language. She enrolled in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program in 1977, and then applied her words to such media as billboards, metal plaques, television spots, t-shirts and tractor hats. Each body of Holzer’s writing speaks in a unique voice, and the voice can run effortlessly from a graffiti-based harangue to elegiac narrative. The texts, as they evolved, include: TRUISMS, 1977–1979; INFLAMMATORY ESSAYS, 1979–1982; LIVING, 1980–1982; UNDER A ROCK, 1985–1987; and LAMENTS, 1987–1989.… (meer)

Bringing together artists from every continent, speakers and art historians from around the globe, the Venice Biennale is a much-anticipated event. In 2005, for the first time in its history, the exposition will be curated by two women: Maria de Corral and Rosa Martinez.With more than seven hundred illustrations, this catalogue of the 2005 Biennale is a compendium of the world's leading avant-garde artists and trends. It consists of three volumes, each coinciding with the main themes of this year's Biennale:The Experience of Art, curated by Maria de Corral in the Italian Pavilion is classical in character and juxtaposes works of renowned artists of the past thirty years, such as Beuys, Warhol, Basquiat, and Matta, with contemporary artists. Rosa Martinez calls her show in the Arsenale Always a Little Further, a reference to the comic books by Hugo Pratt featuring the sea captain Corto Maltese, whose taste for adventure also defines artists dedicated to exploring new frontiers. Ms. Martinez probes worlds beyond language by contrasting installation and video art with painting and sculpture.The third section of the Biennale features the 2005 Participating Countries and their pavilions. Represented are, among others, Albania, Morocco, and Lebanon, and a sampling of artists from around the globe, such as Gilbert & George of Great Britain, Gat Bener of Israel, and Pipilloti Rist of Switzerland.… (meer)