Untitled (You Are A Very Special Person)
Barbara Kruger
BARBARA KRUGER, 1995. PHOTOGRAPHIC SILKSCREEN ON VINYL.
Working as a magazine designer, Barbara Kruger came to innately understand the linguistic, typographic and visual conventions of consumerism. Single line slogans that sold disposable products week after week, images of airbrushed beauty that promoted shame, and direct instructions to the reader that their life could be better if only they did this, bought that, or changed something in themselves. A sort of meta-commentary on consumerism had been embedded in the art world since the advent of Pop, but Kruger took it beyond simple appropriation or decontextualisation. Her work combines found imagery with cut up phrases, often adulterated from their original form, to create images of a disquieting juxtaposition. The pieces feel immediately, viscerally familiar that to observe them is to question our own comfort with a visual language that wants something from us. Kruger makes us stop and question the inundation of messaging in our daily lives, and from a place of deep understanding forces a reflection on the power of words and images.