“Slipping into madness is good for the sake of comparison.”
While that might sound like an offbeat new marketing gambit by the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau, the aphorism, displayed on a theater marquee, is just one element of what may be the weirdest, if most eerily appropriate, art exhibit in town. It’s currently playing on West 42nd Street, the legendary street of dreams that drugs, prostitution and petty crime turned into a street of sleaze. most arresting pieces are the aphorisms, or “truisms,” installed on the marquees by artist Jenny Holzer. Ranging from the homespun to the bizarre, they fit somewhere between errant thoughts and fortune cookie philosophy.
Holzerisms include: “A lot of professionals are crackpots,” “Alienation produces eccentrics or revolutionaries,” “People who don’t work with their hands are parasites,” “What urge will save you when sex won’t?” and “It is embarrassing to be caught and killed for stupid reasons.” {read}