HERE & NOW

By Blake Gopnik, Washington Post Chief Art Critic
Sunday, October 31, 2004; Page N02 ART

FOR MORE THAN 25 YEARS, American artist Jenny Holzer has been one of our preeminent wordsmiths. By which I mean that she has hammered away at text, twisting and cutting and manipulating it until it does the work she wants it to. Today and tomorrow, Holzer will be presenting a series of her new "Xenon Projections" across the surfaces of Washington buildings. Tonight, a powerful projector will beam the words of three contemporary poets across the facade of a new arts building near Logan Circle. Tomorrow night, other poems, as well as text taken from declassified government documents, will be projected onto the Gelman Library at George Washington University. As usual with Holzer, some meanings will be lost as the words scroll by. Other snippets of sense ought to be amplified. And every bit of text will be transformed.