Arno Pair

The work Arno Pair (2010), donated by the artist to the Collection, is an extraordinary complement to Installation for Bilbao (1997/2017). The latter’s statements, in Basque, Spanish and English, are a variation of Arno, a text originally written for an AIDS research fund-raising project and then adapted for a projection mapping in Florence. In the benches of Arno Pair, the phrases, written only in Basque, are still valid. Although the theme is associated with an immediate, tragic context, the phrases themselves—“I SAY YOUR NAME” or “I KEEP YOUR CLOTHES”—relate to universal issues like intimacy, death or loss. Taking art out of the streets and into the museum, Holzer addresses a completely different audience, made not of passers-by but of museum-goers, inviting reflection on the elusive and tense boundaries between the public and the private spheres.