Abstract
Jenny Holzer is known as an artist of simulationism from the 1980s. Her signature work is a flashing text on electric boards placed within cities. When her practice began in the milieu of downtown New York in the late 1970s, its invasion of public space with anonymous words had immediate critical impact. However, I argue that its impact was somewhat undermined by the mediated space of post-modern cities along with the regression of the public sphere. Focusing on the issues of ‘public space’ and ‘art space,’ I chart how her texts were interpreted as well as how they defined space.
