Barbara Kruger

A major solo exhibition of new and recent work, critiquing the language of mass media.
Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke Street, Oxford OX1 1BP, Fri 27 June - Sun 31 August 2014

Did Barbara Kruger, former graphic designer in the glossy magazine game, move into the art world as a kind of whistle-blower, exposing and trying to use the power of words and pictures to open our eyes to how we are all being duped? That's what it looks like to me.

A video installation (which is claimed to be 'rare'), several small framed images with ransom note style captions pasted onto them, and a large space plastered with text are the things on offer here. I wonder if I dislike the advertising industry enough. They are terrible ! They use words to manipulate our minds and make us buy stuff we don't need. Barbara Kruger has harnessed the tools of the advertisers and magazines (as I say - those specialist things, loaded with power - words, and pictures) to wake us up to our obliviousness...we want things, she says, we buy things, and then we forget them! Well, we don't think about them all the time, do we? If we did, we would be unfit to do anything else.

Here, we are being accused of bling-centricity, as a result, I suppose, of a mindset created by 'the man'. A caption reads 'we don't need another hero', superimposed on a 1950's (?) drawing or touched-up photo of a boy and a girl - the girl is feeling the biceps of the boy. This is something I did as a child. (We were always being encouraged to try and grow up big and strong - but not only us boys.) Well, I think we do need heroic people. I wonder if the trouble for Kruger may just be that a 'hero' is 'male' ?

An arguing family sit round a table having an argument...there are four screens around the walls - it's 'as if we are in the room !...students discuss the prevalence of surveillance after one of them raises a camera to take a shot...'every one wants to be on t.v.' says one, but I don't see what Kruger is actually trying to point us to - I think that she has claimed that she is merely showing her viewers things, rather than making statements about them, but her choice of targets for our perusal and subsequent conscience examination is her message really, isn't it?

Kruger wants us to be wary, it seems, and the fact that she uses 50cm high block capital lettering in places to do this, indicates that she is keen that we should PAY ATTENTION to her warnings. She defected from the media, and now she is...our heroine?! She seems to be telling us why we can't just carry on turning the volume down when the ads come on the tv, and being 'poster blind' when we see a 'billboard', and laughing in the face of our inability to categorise people accurately without resorting to words which should surely be outlawed because they could mean anything to anyone, as text-messaging should be outlawed, and flash, expensive watches and luxury cars too...plastic surgery, white men with power, poor use of english when we are describing things we don't like...all these things are terrible, I know, but for now we just have to put up with things - you know.

If there's one thing I will take from this show it will be a new determination never to buy anything whatsoever which has been advertised by anyone with a nice car - or a watch for that matter!

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