Access a slow-looking exercise of this work.

Transcript
Narrator: This 2023 painting by Jenny Holzer is titled "READY FOR YOU." The vertically oriented canvas is about 5 feet wide by almost 7 feet tall.

Gleaming gold leaf gilds nearly the entire surface of the linen canvas. Light bounces off the metal in various directions as one approaches and moves around the work. At certain angles, a subtle grid pattern shines, built by the delicate squares of carefully applied gold leaf. 

Words in silver-colored leaf sit roughly at the center of the composition, their metallic bodies sometimes difficult to discern when they get lost in the harmonious reflections of the surrounding gold. Depending on where one stands, the shining reflections dim, and the silver-colored letters become more easily distinguishable, contrasting with the gold. 

The letters are each around eight inches tall and look handwritten. They are irregular, as if informally scrawled, and blunt, as if made with a thick-tipped marker. They form lines of words that are spaced widely over four rows, giving an impression they were hurriedly, not carefully, written. The letters are capitalized, squat, and rounded, and together, the eight words make up a short phrase: “THEY ARE READY FOR YOU WHEN YOU ARE.”

Above this phrase, at the top center of the canvas, small, printed text in reddish-orange reads “THE WHITE HOUSE.” These printed words are capitalized, sans serif typeface, and thinly underlined. The orderly composition of this text heading suggests that this work is a blown-up representation of a printed sheet of letterhead, scribbled with a handwritten note. In the bottom-left corner of the canvas, a smaller block of text reads, “Authenticated U.S. Government Information.” The letters “GPO” appear underneath, bordered on the right by a stylized silhouette of an eagle. 

Upon close inspection at the boundaries between the applied metal leaves, vibrant underlayers of reddish-orange paint and cobalt blue paint peek through. The gold-colored leaf background is painted with the cool blue undertone and the silvery scrawled letters glow hot with the red-orange undertone. Where the bold paint hues are directly visible surrounding the metal leafed borders, they create an active visual effect; the letters almost seem to quiver.

"READY FOR YOU" is in fact based on a handwritten note on a White House pocket card preserved by the National Archives. The note—“THEY ARE READY FOR YOU WHEN YOU ARE”—was delivered to President Donald Trump by an aide on January 6, 2021, before Trump gave a speech encouraging his supporters to march to the US Capitol and “fight like hell” to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.

This piece is part of a body of Holzer’s work consisting of declassified government documents, transferred by hand to linen. Her work draws from art-historical references for painterly techniques and visual themes, including Alexander Rodchenko’s experiments with color, light, and form. The content of the documents often obscured from heavy redactions ranges from post-9/11 US military records to contemporary reports on the use of artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons by the US government. The deeply tactile painting process overlays the bureaucratic anonymity of the documents and amplifies methods of censorship and concealment, rematerializing redacted events. Holzer has said of her work in the medium: “I wanted to show time and care. I wanted it to be an indicator of sincerity and attention. I wanted the works to be human.”

Ver todos los episodios