Barbara Kruger

David Zwirner is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent works by renowned American artist Barbara Kruger. Spanning the gallery’s three locations on West 19th Street in New York, this will be Kruger’s first presentation at the gallery since the announcement of her representation in 2019.

Kruger powerfully and directly engages with viewers through her distinctive visual language, utilizing images, text, and technology as tools of communication to reveal and question established power structures and social constructs. The exhibition will feature nine large-scale video works and installations, as well as sound installations and vinyl wallpaper, that not only reaffirm the cultural prominence of Kruger’s iconic visual language but also reveal the radical inventiveness and lasting relevance of her incisive work with pictures and words.

Installation view, Barbara Kruger, David Zwirner, New York, 2022

Location

519, 525 & 533 West 19th Street New York

Dates

June 30—August 12, 2022

Opening Reception

Thursday, June 30, 6-8 PM

Artist

Barbara Kruger

Press Release

Barbara Kruger

“In the four decades since Kruger emerged as one of this country’s most uncompromising conceptual artists, the media landscape has changed almost beyond comprehension. But Kruger has kept up with it, turning to different modes of presentation and media, refining her messages, sharpening her wit.”

—Philip Kennicott, The Washington Post

Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1989/2019
Single-channel video on LED panel, sound, 1 min, 4 sec
137 7/8 x 137 7/8 inches (350.1 x 350.1 cm)
Edition of 1, 1 AP

“[Untitled (Your body is a battleground)] retains the power of its original message and expands its trenchant cultural commentary, offering an array of declarations for the current fame-obsessed, social-media-driven economy, even while many of our personal freedoms continue to remain at risk.”

—Robyn Farrell, Associate Curator, Art Institute of Chicago

The exhibition features a number of Kruger’s “replays,” a body of work begun in 2019 in which the artist reconfigures in new digital formats some of the most well-known examples from her oeuvre. The replays, which are augmented with sound effects, transform the previously static images into dynamic video works that engage with the visual paradigm of the current moment.

“Language is subtle—the shift of a word can change the meaning, and you see that [in Kruger’s work] in real time.”

—Rebecca Morse, Curator, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Installation view, Barbara Kruger, David Zwirner, New York, 2022

“[Kruger’s] work demands that each of us recognize the fact that our identities and positions, our mark of difference from one another in terms of gender, class, race, age, religion, etc. are defined within the structuring powers of language, image, and space, that is, cultural systems of representation.”

—Miwon Kwon, Professor and Chair in Modern and Contemporary Art, Department of Art History, UCLA

Installation view, Barbara Kruger, David Zwirner, New York, 2022

“[Kruger’s] enduring subject is power as product, in terms of both the anonymous collective machinations of social control and its accumulation and abuse by singular worthies.”

—James Rondeau, Director, Art Institute of Chicago

In the present work, Kruger animates a trio of text-based works from 1988 that examine the conventional notions of the pledge, the will, and the vow.

Installation view, Barbara Kruger, David Zwirner, New York, 2022

“You think your way through a vow you can probably recite by heart, stumbling across unacknowledged sentiments and, elsewhere as the text continues, even shocking cruelties and bigotries. Finally, you arrive at a fuller understanding of your participation in the construction of a social contract.”

—Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times

Barbara Kruger, installation view, 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani, 2022. Photo by Maris Mezulis

Barbara Kruger, Bitte lachen / Please cry, installation view, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, April 29–August 28, 2022, courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers / Mies van der Rohe, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022. Photo: Timo Ohler

The work is on view in the main exhibition of the Venice Biennale through November 27, 2022, and at Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin through August 31, 2022.

Installation view, Barbara Kruger, David Zwirner, New York, 2022

“What [Kruger] does in her work forces you to just take stock, to think, to wonder. We can smile at it, we can be mad at it, we can take pleasure in it. All those things are possible.... That multiplicity of the possibility of many meanings is now literally animated and present in her work.”

—Michael Govan, CEO and Director, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

“By bringing the world into her work, Kruger confronts the stereotypes and clichés of power, sexuality, and representation that are contained within the mirror’s reflection.”

—Ann Goldstein, Deputy Director, Chair and Dittmer Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago

Installation view, Barbara Kruger, David Zwirner, New York, 2022

“Kruger creates situations where we can meaningfully engage in systemic critique as well as self-reflection.... Caught between this proverbial rock and hard place, the viewer must choose where to stand between hierarchies of speaking up and hero worship.”

—Zoé Whitley, Director, Chisenhale Gallery

The exhibition at David Zwirner coincides with a large-scale site-specific installation by the artist in the Donald and Catherine Marron Family Atrium of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, which will open on July 16, 2022. Additionally, a major solo exhibition devoted to the artist’s work is now on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through July 17, 2022, after having debuted at the Art Institute of Chicago in the fall of 2021.

Installation view, Barbara Kruger: Thinking of ~~You~~. I Mean Me. I Mean You., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, March 20, 2022–July 17, 2022, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

Installation view, Barbara Kruger: Thinking of ~~You~~. I Mean Me. I Mean You., Art Institute of Chicago, September 19, 2021–January 24, 2022, photo © Art Institute of Chicago

“These videos are also about the ways in which we fumble over language, how we occasionally leap from one word to another, because of the shape they take in our mouth or brain, without realizing that they’re in opposition. Language is about words, but also about context and structure, and sometimes those things render specificity null.”

—Jon Caramanica, The New York Times

Installation view, Barbara Kruger, David Zwirner, New York, 2022

Barbara Kruger: Thinking of ~~You~~. I Mean Me. I Mean You.

This volume accompanies the major solo exhibition devoted to the artist’s work at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

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