Once consumed by passersby on the streets of New York City via pasted posters, the single-sentence declarations, cliches, urgent messages and comically absurd announcements of Holzer's texts come full-circle in the conceptual artist's 2012 All Fall.

Here, the formerly guerrilla-style, low-fi texts of Truisms and Living, meant to surprise, delight and possibly concern the public are now cycled on repeat in glowing, can't-ignore-it LED lights. Inspired or pulled from the artist's readings of critical, religious, political and radical revolutionary manifestos and publications, Holzer invited the reader through language and happenstance to consider the manipulation of propaganda in our everyday. “I used language because I wanted to offer content that people—not necessarily art people—could understand,” she explained.

Survival, the only text initially conceived for electronic signage, takes the most demanding note of the text trios, with alternating statements of extreme including explosion, starvation, fun, poverty and love.

Together, Holzer asks us to parse, consider, self-edit, and, perhaps most importantly, linger on what stands out...now, and later, conscious or not. Perhaps the work is best summed by this simple line from her first collection of lines on view: REPETITION IS THE BEST WAY TO LEARN.

About SITE SANTA FE Spotlight

SITE SANTA FE Spotlight seeks to strengthen collaboration across New Mexico’s arts communities by dedicating space to works loaned in partnership with local institutions, foundations, and private collections.

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Tia Collection