In a recent interview, the artist revealed the surprising new works she’s creating
Jenny Holzer is making new artwork – but if it’s a new series of Truisms you’re expecting then you’d be mistaken. In an interview with Artnet News published today, Holzer revealed she has been making a series of watercolours which incorporate both Yayoi Kusama and Jeffrey Epstein.
The artist was initially speaking about her recently released limited edition Earth Day print featuring one of her Truisms, “ALL THINGS ARE DELICATELY INTERCONNECTED”, which she is selling 100 prints at $1,000 each with the proceeds funding Art for Acres as well as the WHO’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.
Alongside speaking about how she ‘dusted off’ the Truism, as well as rightly criticising Trump’s response to the pandemic, Holzer reveals the surprising art she’s been making recently.
“In my downtime I’m making utterly inexplicable watercolours that look like Kusama on a bad day, on top of the pages of Jeffrey Epstein’s address book, so go figure. I do have an attachment and claim to the irrational.”
Holzer goes on to condemn Epstein. “Was there ever a monster, he’d qualify,” she says, adding that she believes more distressing information will come to light about the disgraced financier’s crimes. “I’d like to know more, sooner, in a bleak kind of way. It’ll be a while perhaps, given the players, but it’ll land. Meanwhile, I’m staining the address book. Trump features – his section of the address book is big, Melania is there, too. We have the redacted address book and the unredacted one.”
When quizzed on how she came into possession with the unredacted address book, Holzer replies, “Somebody knew somebody who knew somebody.”
While it’s not clear whether Holzer is working from a copy of Epstein’s address book or the original, the art being made will be incredibly powerful if ever shown publicly. But whether the series will see the light of day, she adds, depends on her own artistic ego. “If my art part of it ceases to be quite as embarrassing as it is now (I will show them)! We had a few of the watercolours in a show Switzerland in the winter – a few of them leaked, so to speak. But I’m going to hold off on showing more until I become a better artist.”
It’s not the first time that Holzer has worked with concealed information. In 2006, she began working on a series called “Redaction Paintings”, which repurposed declassified national security documents to “reveal just how little they actually reveal”.