Jenny Holzer | Abuse of Power Comes as No Surprise

Jenny Holzer

Abuse of Power Comes as No Surprise

Halifax, Canada: The Press of The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1983

[136] pp., 8.5 × 8.5 × 0.5", softcover

Edition size unknown

Between 1972 and 1987, the NSCAD Press published 26 titles by painters, sculptors, filmmakers, dancers, a composer, etc. These include books by Michael Asher, Dara Birnbaum, Daniel Buren, Gerald Ferguson, Simone Forti, Hollis Frampton, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Donald Judd, Bernhard Leitner, Claes Oldenberg, Yvonne Rainer, Gerhard Richter, Martha Rosler, Steve Reich, Michael Snow and Lawrence Weiner, among others. All are now considered classics and are difficult to find, and expensive to purchase, on the secondary market. 

This early artist book by Jenny Holzer, whose full title is Abuse of Power Comes as No Surprise - Truisms and Essays, features her best known and most influential work.  

"Jenny Holzer’s Truisms and Essays is the third1 volume in the Nova Scotia Pamphlets. It collects a large number of ‘found’2 statements, that were originally published anonymously in the format of posters in the streets of New York. The sentences are commonplaces of contemporary ideology, prejudices and cliches of thinking that voice repressed desires and aggressive fears. Holzer is successful in making these statements of reified thinking and perceiving transparent in the manner that she simply formalizes and arranges these sentences alphabetically and by juxtaposing various seemingly contradictory viewpoints of conviction without suggesting a reading that would allow for the reader’s easy identification or a simple gesture of critical distantiation. The ‘essays’ are short texts which comprise one hundred words each and they condense moments of unconscious linguistic everyday life into moments of sudden awareness of one’s proper constitution in ideology.”

- NSCAD

1. Following Martha Rosler’s Three Works and Gerhard Richter’s 128 Details from a

Picture. 

2. Found?