Barbara Krugers work during the early 1980’s had a perfected agitprop style using her large scale, cropped and black and white images which where juxtaposed with racious pithy and often ironic aphorisms. Her style was that of printed in Futura Bold, against black, white or deep red text bars. She had developed this style through her background of Graphic design and magazine work experiences. Through this she was able to find the best way to communicate her ideas through to the population.
In recent years her work had developed much in contemporary arts as she starting creating public installations of her work in galleries, museums, buildings, train stations and parks as well as buses and billboards throughout the world.
One of Krugers most recent works ‘The Globe Shrinks’ 2010 is a multiple video installation that continues with her engagement with the brutality of the everyday, the collision of declaration and doubt, the duet of pictures and words, the resonance of direct address, and the unspoken in every conversation (http://slamxhype.com/art-design/barbara-kruger-“the-globe-shrinks”-at-mary-boone-gallery/). This is a perfect example of how Kruger has developed her art works and moved on to experiment with different medias which we are more often seeing in todays contemporary art.
Kruger uses her knowledge from her graphic design and advertising background to create her new installation works. She still works with the simpleness of black and white with contrasting precise colors and simple type and framework pictures. The video installations is what is used throughout the world and the mass media of getting across messages and advertising which Kruger has taken the intuitive to take advantage of. It is in the way she uses the simplicity that i find creates a strong and bold impact to the audience.
Her works over the past 30 years has been developed through the different mediums whilst still using her style of simplicity. She has taken advantage of the different processes in how she shows her work such as enlarging the scale of her work into large billboards away from poster size. From there she has moved into more installations where her ideas have still remained the same. The use of video installations i find to be very powerful in the way she has used her knowledge of reaching audiences through her graphic design career to reach a broader audience.
[untitled (between being born and dying), 2008]
ReplyDeleteIt is recent work in her works for Moderna Museet’s 50th anniversary in 2008.
It was installed in museum by posters. she used images which was taken by her and text. The expression which was mixed photos and words or sentences usually shows black and white photos and the red and white texts. This work is poster style but it looks like interior or installation art in the museum as well. I think this work was made more develop by her than existing other works.
I think spatial art and installation are 3D works which show three-dimensional structure but 2D works such as visual art and graphic art like poster which show flat structure. When 3D artist make works, they always use materials which can be solid things so viewers feel various things in one space. On the other hand her work looks like 3D but her material or her expression ways is 2D. She made by both 2D and 3D so audience experience is more spatial than existing other 2D and 3D works.
hello niggles,
ReplyDeletegood information on the themes behind Krugers video installation 'the Globe Shrinks'. thankyou for putting that up as I am much more interested in her video work than poster work but had trouble finding many images or any info on it.
you can see the 'growth' of Barbara krugers work as she has gradually increased sizeand dimension to the work over the years whilst staying true to her signature colours and style. increasing original posters (70s and 80s) to billboard size... then the 3D installation in 2007 ('Between Being Born and Dying') finally followed by video installation in 2010 shows this progression.