The razor-sharp, witty and unmistakable work of Barbara Kruger explores the power of image and word and touches on the dynamics of control, class, corruption and consumerism. For over four decades, her voice and aesthetic have transcended the insularity of the art world and influenced everyday visual culture. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Kruger at the London gallery. The artist’s most recent text-based wall work and series of vinyls will be set in dialogue with a group of ‘paste-ups’—collages from the 1980s related to some of her early and best-known works.
The ground floor galleries are dedicated to Kruger’s new textual wall works (all 2024) that grapple with our current dystopian reality. The stark works activate the space and address the viewer with their bold statements, white on black, that play with the seductive visual effects of three-dimensionality.
In a compelling voice, large-scale digital prints on vinyl such as Untitled (A thing called me) and Untitled (A thing called you) continue Kruger’s frequent use of pronouns: assuming a speaker and suggesting a recipient, the text aligns the viewer with the work. Unlike the other six stretched works, the adjacent Untitled (End of world) is a vinyl wallpaper. Covering an entire wall, its expansive scale confronts viewers with their own positions and feelings. Nearby, Untitled (Being and nothingness), which quotes the title of Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1943 seminal work on existentialism, consciousness and freedom, meets the gigantic words of Untitled (Winner loser) that connect to the world’s ongoing cycle of war, power abuse, brutality and subjugation.
On the gallery’s first floor, fourteen of Kruger’s famed paste-ups are on display. Money and its corruptible power, a dominant leitmotif in her oeuvre, manifests itself throughout the present selection. As so often, her clever combination of image and text allows for a myriad of possible readings that address and engage our hopes, desires, fears and values. Together, the show’s works exemplify Kruger’s ability to consistently question how we reveal ourselves to one another and to the cultures that construct and contain us.
Barbara Kruger (*1945, Newark, NJ) lives and works in Los Angeles and New York. Solo shows include the Serpentine Gallery, London (2024), Museum of Modern Art, New York (2022), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2022), Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2022), The Art Institute of Chicago (2021), AMOREPACIFIC Museum of Art, Seoul (2019), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (2016), High Line Art, New York (2016), Modern Art Oxford (2014), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2013), Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2011), Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2010), Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (2005), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2000), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1999), Serpentine Gallery, London (1994), Musée d’art contemporain, Montreal (1985) and Kunsthalle Basel (1984). Group shows include La Biennale di Venezia (2022), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (2021), Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2018), V-A-C Foundation, Palazzo delle Zattere, Venice (2017), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014), Biennale of Sydney (2014), Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2013), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2010), Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010, 2009, 2007), Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2006), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2004), Tate Liverpool (2002), Centre Pompidou, Paris (1988) and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1987).
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