Barbara Kruger: Early Works

Skarstedt London is delighted to announce its forthcoming exhibition of seminal early works by American artist Barbara Kruger. The exhibition features Kruger’s large-scale black and white photographs, overlaid with provocative captions in bold Futura type. Made in the 1980s, these works examine the cultural constructions of power, identity and sexuality through their juxtaposition of text and imagery.

Drawing on her background in graphic design, Kruger adopts the same visual tools mass media use to disseminate social and political stereotypes. With an emphasis on layout, format, typeface and typography, the two-dimensional planarity of these photo-collages simulates the flat surface of printed media. Appropriating images from photographic annuals and magazines, Kruger not only challenges the status of the photograph as a record of truth, she also subverts the illusions and aspirations of a modern American culture projected by these images through her explicit slogans.