Word play and pithy slogans presented in iconic artworks at the Serpentine Gallery by artist Barbara Kruger. There is a sense of familiarity to the exhibition. It has the feeling of a retrospective, delivering many of her typographic based artworks but remixed using newer technologies to keep them relevant and contemporary for a new audience. Kruger has a very strong, immediately recognisable visual aesthetic opting for mostly stark, black and white photographic imagery (strongly reminiscent of the bold graphics of renowned graphic designers Herbert Bayer, Herbert Matter and the Bauhaus/Russian Constructivist era movements in graphic design), with contrasting red bands onto which she superimposes a Futura Bold Oblique font for maximum visual impact. This is strongly influenced by Kruger's beginnings as a graphic designer and picture editor at Conde Nast in which she developed her fluency in working with words and pictures stating "one thing I learned working at magazines was that if you couldn't get people to look at a page or a cover, then you were fired. It was all about how you create arresting works, and by arresting I mean stop people, even for a nano-second." In a couple of the Serpentine gallery spaces the projected installations come across as a constant newsfeed which is reflected in Kruger's interest in the media and the way in which it reports news - "I'd always been a news junkie, always read lots of newspapers and watched the Sunday morning news shows on TV and felt strongly about issues of power, control, sexuality and race." Kruger's piece Untitled (No Comment), 2020, occupying the main gallery space is a fast-moving video work featuring memes, hairstyling tutorials, facially obscured selfies, and rapid fire Instagram/Tik Tok screenshots of users takes on her famous 1990 piece I Shop Therefore I Am. At certain points the installation becomes immersive as the parallel lines of type move in opposite directions bending around the gallery walls to create a dizzying, disorientating sensation of movement. The exhibition demonstrates the power of the word and slogans in society and how they can be used to empower/manipulate individuals. I mentioned earlier how there may be influences of other typographic designers but in the combination of type and image I also detected resemblances to World War II propaganda posters. As well as the strong graphics on display there is also an audio element of sound based installation too (Rogue Audio), consisting of a series of beeps, spoken greetings, declarations of love for the visitor, and questions issuing forth throughout the exhibition creating a fully immersive experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment