Truisms is a series of 193 one-line statements which appear either as printed signs or, as here, computer-generated graphics.  They range from the inspirational and altruistic to the selfish and destructive.  Some posit generally held beliefs (“Good deeds eventually are rewarded”) while others recommend ideas of more dubious acceptability (“Morals are for little people”) or even of general repugnance (“Torture is horrible and exciting”).  Some propose enlightened behavior (“Raise boys and girls alike”), revolutionary beliefs (“People who don’t work with their hands are parasites”; “Private property created crime”), benign thinking (“Humanism is obsolete”), or sobering reflection (“Ideals are replaced by conventional goals at a certain age”).  Yet another truism—“There’s a fine line between information and propaganda”—perhaps expresses the fundamental ambivalence underlying all of them.

This five-foot structure, with its thirty-five minute, burned-in sequence, is one of an edition of eight multiples (four in red, four in yellow-green), and is a small-scale version of a work by Holzer that was temporarily installed in Times Square in New York.  Intermittently it utilizes flashing lights, beeps, and changes of rhythmic movement to energize the impact of its message.  The “truisms” are listed alphabetically, relegating their assorted subjects to a structured but irrelevant order.