° 1945
Lives in New York (US), born in Newark, New Jersey (US), lives in Los Angeles (US).
Barbara Kruger (°1945) lives and works in New York and Los Angeles. She studies visual arts and design in New York and works for several magazines as a graphic designer and head of the design department.
This background would prove crucial to her subsequent artistic activity. Visual language drawn from the mass media offers very powerful communication tools. Barbara Kruger appropriates the clichés and techniques used in the mass media for artistic ends. She works with the same strategies, but only to transmit her own critical message on sexuality and social and political issues. She replaces messages that in the mass media are intended to encourage consumption by critical, aggressive one-liners like I shop therefore I am, I am not trying to sell you anything or When I hear the word culture I take out my check book. She raises questions about how power functions and its effect on the human condition: how is power accumulated, used and misused. Constantly recurring themes in her subversive and investigative work are feminism, consumption, individual autonomy and desire. She designed posters for a women’s-rights demonstration in 1989 in Washington, wrote a much-translated feminist pamphlet and published pieces on discrimination against minorities and AIDS patients.
Kruger’s work is shown in museums and galleries, but also on advertising billboards, bus stops, posters, T-shirts and plastic bags, as well as in stations, parks or other public places. At first sight, what you see is advertisement. But what you read, clashes with customary advertising messages. In recent work, in addition to written text, Kruger also uses sound, and video-projection alongside photography. The confrontation with the viewer becomes ever more intrusive and claustrophobic; her work comes even closer to the public. Kruger’s concept is both public and political.
>Barbara Kruger, We Are Not What We Seem, 1988.Collage, screen print, vinyl, chassis, 276 x 243 cm.
>Barbara Kruger, My Pretty Pony (Barbara Kruger & Stephen King), 1989.Book, ink, paper, 36 x 23.5 cm, language : English, author : Stephen King, publisher : Alfred A. Knopf, Inc./Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, ISBN : 0-394-58037-0, [Borzoi Book].
> Exhibition: EXTRA MUROS: Geel – Middle Gate II – The Story of Dymphna. 15 September 2018 - 04 November 2018.
> Exhibition: EXTRA MUROS: Visite Diest. 27 November 2014 - 21 December 2014.
> Exhibition: The collection XXXIII – The Collection as a Character. 07 June 2013 - 22 September 2013.
> Exhibition: The Eightees – A Decade of Extremes. 17 June 2016 - 18 September 2016.
> Exhibition: The Situation is Fluid. 25 January 2025 - 03 January 2027.
> Exhibition: When Faith Moves Mountains. 17 July 2022 - 09 October 2022.
> Exhibition: Worth Fighting For. 14 November 2022 - 14 December 2022.
> Ensemble: Artist Books.
> Ensemble: Collectie Vlaamse Gemeenschap.
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> Ensemble: Individualism.
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> Ensemble: kunstenaarsboeken uit de jaren '80 [artists' books from the 80s].
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> Ensemble: M HKA_DEFAULT_WORKS.
> Ensemble: Middle Gate.
> Ensemble: NUCLEUS.
> Ensemble: WAANZIN | MADNESS.
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> Ensemble: We are not what we seem.
> Ensemble: Worth Fighting For.