Among America´s best-known artists, Jenny Holzer examines the power of language through glowing, disembodied texts enunciated by an unstable register of personae: is this the voice of an ad-man, a stand-up comic, a torturer, an evangelist? In addition to having written many oft-quoted Truisms (such as Abuse of Power Comes as No Surprise´), she has found visually stunning means of conveying them, from the anonymous posters hung in the streets of Manhattan, to electronic signs in a sports stadium, to a giant installation spiralling up the Guggenheim Museum interior. Holzer, awarded the Leone dOro prize for her contribution to the 1990 Venice Biennale, fuses influences ranging from advertising to Minimalism´s use of industrial materials in an innovative form of public art. ´
