ART CITIES:Berlin-Barbara Kruger
Barbara Kruger’s work with pictures and words has become iconic for the reach of its political and social critique. In only a few words, printed large in uppercase block print, Kruger manages to satirize, denounce, and illuminate the uses of power and force in art, culture, and language. The bold, massive statements printed in her signature towering uppercase letters spell out a critique and succinct analysis of the state of politics, desire, sexism, and consumerism today.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Sprüth Magers Gallery
The site-specific work ”FOREVER” marks the 30th anniversary of Barbara Kruger’s first solo exhibition with Sprüth Magers Gallery. For this installation, which occupies all four walls and the floor of the Berlin gallery’s main exhibition space, the artist has created one of her immersive room-wraps and several new vinyl works. Riffing on Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own,” Kruger filled the entire gallery wall with, “You know that women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size”. According to The New York Times, Kruger finds the essay to be “Very relevant to the conditions of certain women. I mean, when I read Woolf, I’m very aware of both the expansiveness of her writing, but also the specificity of being a white woman of a particular class in England when she wrote this.” Thus, she used that quote, “Because I think that it’s both humorous and tragic, which is what the world can be read and felt as many days”. Kruger’s work reveals the power of language as a signifying as well as aesthetic force, and addresses the viewer directly in an appeal to reason and transparency, recognizing how power is driven through culture. Since the late 1970s, Kruger has established herself as one of the most influential figures in contemporary art. Beginning with her earliest works, for which she combined language with mass media imagery culled from books and magazines, she has turned a critical eye toward consumerism, desire, political will, and the often-hidden mechanisms of power operating within contemporary society. In the mid-1990s, Kruger produced her first multichannel video works and room-wrappings, tapping into a long-standing interest in architecture and expanding the scale of her installations to envelop viewers in disorienting, but thought-provoking, environments. Her exhibition in Berlin extends these investigations, which are as timely as ever in a moment pervaded by pseudo-facts and alternative realities.
Info: Sprüth Magers Gallery, Oranienburger Straße 18, Berlin, Duration: 16/9/17-20/1/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, http://spruethmagers.com
