Selections From Truisms: A sincere effort is all that you can ask...

Feminist, activist, and coolly conceptual, Holzer came onto the New York scene in the late 1970s with her Truisms—provocations that added sharp edginess to the banality of her language. The term “truism”—an old saw, stock phrase, platitude, or bromide—has a folksy ring, but Holzer’s statements are wry, ironic, and sometimes hostile. Always intended for the public sphere, her work, in many populist mediums including billboards, projections, LED signs, T-shirts, stickers, and the series that includes this bench, relies on a confluence of assumptions about gender, consumer culture, and art—its action, institutions, and markets. In 1990, Holzer was the first woman artist to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, where she was awarded the Leone d’Oro prize.