If It's Hip, It's Here (Archives): holzer truisms

Artist Jenny Holzer, best known for her projections, LED installations and truisms -- artwork made with words, is collaborating with Keds for the Whitney Museum to launch a special collection that features her famous phrase "PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT" which has previously appeared on everything from golf balls, a BMW v12 race car, condoms, on wooden postcards and installed on buildings and more as art projects.

The KEDS, which feature the phrase, will be available in both high and low tops, canvas and leather and in black or white:

above: artist Jenny Holzer, courtesy of artnet
"It's great that Keds and the Whitney are friends," states Jenny Holzer. "I have a renewed respect for shoe designers."

The collection, which is expected to retail for approximately $70-$75 a pair, will be available at select Bloomingdale's stores nationwide beginning in July, as well as on bloomingdales.com and keds.com starting in July 2010.

All Keds’ profits from the Jenny Holzer kicks will benefit the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Special Keds collections by painters Laura Owens and Sarah Crowner, all of whom have exhibited at The Whitney, will follow.

Special thanks to Alex Asher Sears for bringing this to my attention.

Conceptual artist Jenny Holzer, best known for her "truisms"and light projections teamed up with uber designer Philipe Starck, Baccarat Crystal and FLOS lighting to create 2 unique lamps; a floor lamp and a table lamp, comically named HOOO!!! & HAAA!!! The lamps debuted at this past week's Salone Del Mobile in Milan.

Below are some examples of Jenny Holzer's phrases, known as Truisms, that run within the lamps:
Expiring For Love Is Beautiful But Stupid
Decadence Can Be An End I Itself
Abuse Of Power Comes As No Surprise

To see more truisms, go here.

The Floor Lamp aka HAAA!!!:

Only 9 editions of the floor lamp will be made and each will cost a hard-to-swallow $110,000.00 USD approximately. The floor lamp is an iteration of Starck's previous work for Baccarat, the Firelamp, only now it stands 6 feet tall and incorporates an LED display of Jenny Holzers' Truisms that runs vertically within the Baccarat Crystal stand.

Philippe Starck is shown below with his lamp:

base detail:

Starck's Firelamp for Baccarat:

The Table Lamp aka HOOO!!!:
49 editions of the table lamp will be made. This one costs approx $10,000.00 USD. The design is based upon their classic Eury Dice vase, only now with the incoporated LED light strip displaying Jenny Holzer's Truisms.

Baccarat's Eury Dice vase:

The majority of images in this post are courtesy of Moritz Waldemeyer, who did the custom electronics work for the lamps. He was generous enough to share these wonderful images (and the text is his own commentary) of the impressive invitation from Baccarat and Flos to the inaugural dinner at Salone Del Mobile.

above: The invitation to the launch dinner goes into history as the technically most advanced and most elaborate invitation ever. Each guest was sent a small box containing a mirrored cube. Inside this cube was a tiny LED matrix display that scrolled the text of the invitation including the date and location.

above: Included was also a small tool to switch the cube on and to access the battery, should it need to be changed in the future.

above: At the dinner the guests received the catalogue which had a cut out in which the cube fitted and where it was held in place by 4 invisible magnets.

above: The circuit contained in the cube is the most sophisticated piece of electronic design required by any of our projects so far. It contains about 100 LEDs, a processor, on/off switch and a battery to produce a fully functional text display on a board of 25mm by 25mm in size. To fit all components in an aesthetically pleasing layout required many days of manual optimisation and the first working prototype was soldered by hand to test the design.

special thanks to Domus, DesignWS and Corriere for additional images

Baccarat
Philipe Starck
Jenny Holzer
Flos