Lustmord Benches

Jenny Holzer manufactured a set of twelve wooden benches, chosen from a "Santa Fe Style" catalogue and typical of this ersatz style that is now an internationally institutionalized visual iconography. Hand-carved into the bench seats were a set of propositions in English, called "Lustmord": tough, even crude, messages which emphasize the body and its vulnerability to death, disease, and violence. Set underneath the portico that surrounds the fountain in the Museum of Fine Art courtyard, the benches were camouflaged as ordinary places to sit and enjoy shade away from New Mexico's summer sun. The courtyard functions as a haven within the museum, and has long given expectations of contentment. The visitor who came to contemplate during this exhibition, however, was likely not to have expected the content of contemplation to be the body and its discomforts. Holzer's quiet benches, with their scary messages of messy viscerality, work to undermine a conventional space's formality through the intervention of a language that is on fire. This fire was lit under the seats of many a surprised museumgoer. Holzer's work is an always acute reminder of the power of rhetoric, in which language is used not only to describe, but to dangerously persuade.
Text written by Curator Bruce W. Ferguson and Vincent J. Varga for the exhibition catalog.