Barbara Kruger has changed the way the world looks — its visual language, including art, advertising and graphic design. She has been less successful in changing the way the world works, especially regarding gender injustices — the oppression of women in its infinite variety, the dominance of men (ditto) — and such plagues as war, consumerism and poverty.
But that is surely not for lack of trying. Since the late 1980s Kruger has parlayed her skills as an artist, feminist, writer and graphic designer into some of the most memorable, and resonant, public artworks of her era. Right now, the intensity of her efforts can be seen in two immersive displays in Manhattan: a large installation piece titled “Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You.” that wraps the Museum of Modern Art’s vast Marron Family Atrium — floor and walls — in language, and a battalion of individual pieces filling the spacious 19th Street galleries of David Zwirner, who started representing the artist in 2019, in collaboration with Sprüth Magers.
Kruger is known for glamorous, red-framed montages that begin with slightly archaic black-and-white photographs that emit a well-behaved 1950s air. (They come from a large image bank from — an archive that Kruger has assembled from magazines, newspapers and illustrated books over the decades.) To these she adds her own terse, almost koan-like phrases, blunt observations and imperatives that are contemporary in their economy and style — typically a few words in a blocky white sans-serif font on one or more bands or blocks of red.