This is Barbara Kruger’s first solo exhibition in London after a break of more than twenty years. In her work, she focuses on the study of visual culture and the creation of images: the images and words that Barbara Krüger masterfully plays with in her works are often borrowed from the language of advertising, graphic design and magazines and form an endless labyrinth. Words become images, filling the entire exhibition space and entering the mind of the audience.
The author explores the complex mechanisms of power, gender, class and capital while playing with mass communication methods. Her art has always been political and socially active. “It would be wonderful if my works became archaic, if the questions they try to portray and the comments I try to make are no longer relevant. Unfortunately, this is not the case at the moment,” says Barbara Krueger.
The artist was born in 1945 in Newark, New Jersey. After studying at Syracuse University and Parsons School of Design in New York, she has worked as a designer and photo editor for publishing houses. Condé Nast in magazines Mademoiselle and House & Garden. Barbara Krieger’s works have been exhibited in museums around the world, as well as gaining attention in the urban environment – they have been installed and projected on buildings, placed on billboards, signs, on cars, buses and skate parks, as well as printed in newspapers. Initially, she worked in analog techniques, but later successfully integrated into the digital environment, preserving and developing her handwriting and staying true to herself.
Galleries Serpentine artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist considers Barbara Kruger to be one of the most important authors of our time. “In her exhibition, she lures the viewer into a space where she can reflect on context, history, culture and hierarchy. In our recent conversation, Barbara Krieger said that her art speaks about how we treat each other. For more than half a century, the artist has been creating a commentary on modern life, ” adds Hans Ulrich Obrist.
For the exhibition in London, the artist has adapted works (video, audio, posters, giant prints that cover the walls and floor of the exhibition space, etc.) that were exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art LACMA and New York’s Museum of Modern Art from 2021 to 2023 in the museum MoMA. In these works, the artist uses fragments of texts by philosopher and scientist René Descartes, rapper Kendrick Lamar, writers Voltaire, Karl Kraus, George Orwell and Virginia Woolf in different ways.
A view from Barbara Krieger’s exhibition Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You.which in a London gallery Serpentine South takes place from February 1 to March 17. Photo by George Derrell
Exhibition in the gallery Serpentine will be on display until March 17. On the other hand, from March 4 to May 20, Barbara Krieger’s digital work can be seen on huge screens (they surround the viewer from almost all sides) in the new art space Outernet Arts in the very center of London. A video will be shown here Silent writings/Silent Writings (2009/2024), in which Barbara Kruger analyzes how people communicate with each other and connect with global events. In the installation, the author raises issues of control, power and dominance. Barbara Kruger combines her words with quotes from Aimé Césaire, Goethe, Thomas Mann, and Mary Therese McCarthy, whose themes range from violence, forms of political agency, and the position of the observer. The artist manipulates the chosen words, increasing or deleting them to highlight their meaning and create a new one. Opposite concepts such as contact and isolation, order and horror, stupidity and wisdom become fluid and interchangeable.
Barbara Kruger addresses the audience very directly, making us question our beliefs and perception of the world and reminding us that words and their combinations contain both truth and lies. Like a gallery Serpentinealso Outernet Artswhich calls itself the largest digital exhibition space in Europe, is open to visitors free of charge.
The artist categorically forbids publishing her portraits in the media.
Information: serpentinegalleries.org
2024-02-07 22:32:09
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