Barbara Kruger’s first institutional solo exhibition in Berlin ”Please laugh / Please cry” is on view at Neue Nationalgalerie until August 28.
The U.S. conceptual artist developed a type of installation especially for the hall of the Neue Nationalgalerie that covers the entire floor of the exhibition space.
Please laugh / Please cry
The installation is part of the programme for the reopening of the Neue Nationalgalerie. After the more historically oriented exhibition “Alexander Calder. Minimal – Maximal”, during which the building opened in August 2021 after extensive renovation, Barbara Kruger’s typographic work stands for an emphatically contemporary attitude and perspective.
Out of respect for the iconic architecture, Kruger focuses her work exclusively on the ground floor of the building. All historical elements of the building (such as curtains, carpets, Mies furniture) were removed from the hall. The installation therefore allows for a puristic experience of both: Mies’ glass space, which has been reduced to its basic elements, and Kruger’s written work, which is completely condensed into its forms and messages.
With the graphic force of the writing, reduced to only three colour tones (black, white and red), Kruger succeeds in bringing a strong artistic language of its own into the massive building. Apart from all the relevance of the texts and themes, the invitation to Barbara Kruger is also a tribute to an outstanding artistic position that has strongly influenced the art of the late 20th and early 21st century with her feminist and political approaches.
Barbara Krugers’s exhibition ”Please Laugh / Please Cry” opened on 23 April at Neue Nationalgalerie will end on 28 August.
In the same time
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) opened in March ”Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I mean You”
Co-organized with the Art Institute Chicago, LACMA, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) the exhibition spans four decades and features 33 works, including Kruger’s single-channel videos from the 1980s, digital productions of the last two decades, large-scale vinyl room wraps, multichannel video installations, and audio soundscapes throughout LACMA’s campus.
The exhibition is curated by Michael Govan, CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, and Rebecca Morse, Curator, Wallis Annenberg Photography Department, this exhibition is the largest and most comprehensive presentation of Krugers’s work in 20 years.
”Barbara Kruger’s art, and her dialogue with advertising and propaganda, is ‘essential reading’ for anyone who wants insight into our modern culture”, said Michael Govan.
For Rebecca Morse, ”Kruger’s work is perfect for this moment of re-examining contemporary society”.
”Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I mean You” opened at the Art Institute of Chicago (September 19, 2021 – January 24, 2022). Following its presentation in Los Angeles, a version of the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Modern Art (July 16, 2022 – January 2, 2023).
Barbara Kruger’s work is woven into the fabric of Los Angeles and into LACMA’s institutional history. In 1985, LAMCA presented Barbara Kruger: Untitled Works, the first major West Coast museum exhibition of the artist’s work. This exhibition also played a significant role in the institution’s history as it belonged to the first series of exhibitions organized by LACMA’s newly formed Photography Department. As part of LACMA’s transformative campus expansion, Kruger created the 70-foot, three-story elevator-based work Untitled (Shafted) in BCAM in 2008, which has become a touchstone for the museum.
Barbara Kruger (*1945) has been known since the 1970s for her large format graphics with pointed statements or short texts, questioning common social stereotypes from a feminist and consumption-critic point of view and exploring how images and ideas are disseminated and perceived today.
