“Light Line”

American artist Jenny Holzer is reprising her seminal 1989 installation, “Light Line,” across the Frank Lloyd Wright designed rotunda at the Guggenheim museum in New York. Nearly 35 years since its inception, the electronic text-based installation has been updated with modern technology, and more notably, decades worth of haiku-like observations and fragmented epigrams, dubbed “Truisms” by the Brooklyn-based artist, pertaining violence, systemic injustices and threats to democracy.

“ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE” and “BAD INTENTIONS CAN YIELD GOOD RESULTS” are several of her most notable texts within the show—messages that hold the same relevancy today, as it did when first coined over three decades ago. There are a number of obscure pairings intended to spark dialogue, such as “SEX, BOREDOM MAKES YOU, NATURE’S WAY.” 

The spiraling installation winds up six stories of the institution, double the length as in 1989, and for six hours at a time. As the New York notes, Holzer’s scrolling signboards predated the crawls that have become common place in virtually every journalistic setting since the attacks of September 11—from news to sports. Playing at a slightly slower pace than the frenetic flashes of the original, “Light Line” appears.

Posted by: TAWD on May 22, 2024