The striking artwork of Barbara Kruger will be showcased across three of David Zwirner's galleries this summer (519, 525, and 533 West 19th Street), including nine large-scale video works and installations, as well as sound installations and vinyl wallpaper.
As this is Kruger’s first presentation at the gallery since the announcement of her David Zwirner representation in 2019, visitors can expect to see artworks from across her career, which has been about powerfully and directly engaging with viewers through her distinctive visual language, utilizing images, text, and technology as tools of communication to reveal and question established power structures and social constructs, the gallery states.
The exhibition will feature a major new video installation, "Untitled (No Comment) (2020)," which combines text, images, and audio clips with a barrage of memes from blurred-out selfies to animated photos of cats. A handful of pieces also reconfigure Kruger's most-well known works into new digital formats—in 2019 the artist began creating a series of animated “replays,” each one augmented with striking sound effects, in which she translates her iconic pasteup collages from the 1980s to this new format. Five of these replays will be on view.
Also featured will be "Pledge, Will, Vow (1988/2020)," which is currently included in the 59th Venice Biennale and in Kruger’s solo exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. In this work, transcripts of the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance, traditional marriage vows, and a last will and testament are “typed” on-screen as if being composed and revised in real time.
The exhibit will coincide with a large-scale site-specific installation by the artist titled "Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You." in the Marron Family Atrium of The Museum of Modern Art, from July 16 to January 2, 2023.
