Jenny Holzer

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 d'Oro 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.