EVENT / 2018

Jenny Holzer, Use What is Dominant in a Culture to Change it Quickly

July 19 — August 22, 2018

The Center for Contemporary Art & Culture at Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA)

The works in the exhibition are primarily text-based works selected from the Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation collection on the basis of their prescient vision regarding contemporary political currents and regimes. Holzer’s works presented here stand as a dark prophecy that she future-cast nearly 40 years ago, making sense of the second decade of the 21st Century from the perspective of the late 1970s. Here too, one finds signposts of support, such as the title of the exhibition, Use What is Dominant in a Culture to Change it Quickly, taken from one of the works in the collection. Holzer’s projects are wry, provocative, and outrageous in one moment, while in the next they can be compliant, witty, and agreeable. Through their creation and far reaching distribution, Holzer has seeded inspiration for generations of artists and citizens.

About the Artist

For more than forty years, Jenny Holzer has presented her ideas, arguments, and sorrows in public places and international exhibitions, including 7 World Trade Center, the Venice Biennale, the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Bilbao, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Her medium, whether formulated as a T-shirt, a plaque, or an LED sign, is writing, and the public dimension is integral to the delivery of her work. Starting in the 1970s with the New York City posters, and continuing through her recent light projections on landscape and architecture, her practice has challenged ignorance and violence with humor, kindness, and courage. Holzer received the Leone d’Oro at the Venice Biennale in 1990, the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award in 1996, and the Barnard Medal of Distinction in 2011. She holds honorary degrees from Williams College, the Rhode Island School of Design, The New School, and Smith College. She lives and works in New York.