»The Violence of Handwriting Across a Page«

Between 19 February and 15 May, the Kunstmuseum Basel is showing a crossover of two artists whose common focus is on emotional and linguistic forms of expression: Jenny Holzer (*1950) shares the exhibition space of the new building with the luminary Louise Bourgeois in The Violence of Handwriting Across a Page.

The American Jenny Holzer uses T-shirts, LEDs, projections and street signs as a form of artistic expression to draw attention to the function of language in the public sphere - she herself takes an exploratory and subversive approach. Meanwhile, the French artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) went to a psychological level of observation throughout her life: love, desire, dependence, sexuality, rejection, jealousy and abandonment are the emotions and human conditions that have marked the entire life's work of the influential installation artist. Bourgeois' sculptures, installations, paintings, drawings, prints and texts are juxtaposed with Holzer's works in the exhibition, revealing the multifaceted richness of verbal and non-verbal modes of expression.