Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You

artbook

Regular price $60.00

Edited with text by Peter Eleey, Robyn Farrell, Michael Govan, Rebecca Morse, James Rondeau. Foreword by Michael Govan, Glenn D. Lowry, James Rondeau. Essay by Zoé Whitley.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Forever), 2017. Installation view in Forever. © Sprüth Magers, Berlin, 2017–18.

Five decades of iconic and incisive art from Barbara Kruger

Since the mid-1970s, Barbara Kruger (born 1945) has been interrogating the hierarchies of power and control in works that often combine visual and written language. In her singular graphic style, Kruger probes aspects of identity, desire and consumerism that are embedded in our everyday lives. This volume traces her continuously evolving practice to reveal how she adapts her work in accordance with the moment, site and context. The book features a range of striking images—from her analogue paste-ups of the 1980s to digital productions of the last two decades, including new works produced on the occasion of the exhibition. Also featured are singular works in vinyl, her large-scale room wraps, multichannel videos, site-specific installations and commissioned works.

The book also showcases how Kruger’s site-specific works have been reconceived for each venue, and includes a section of reprinted texts selected by the artist. Renowned for her use of direct address and her engagement with contemporary culture, Kruger is one of the most incisive and courageous artists working today. This volume explores how her pictures and words remain urgently resonant in a rapidly changing world.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Forever), 2017. Installation view in Forever. © Sprüth Magers, Berlin, 2017–18.

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

Creative Boom

Katy Cowan

Traces her forever evolving practice, revealing how she has adapted her work to suit the moment, site and context. [...] In these trying times, the book reminds us that Kruger's pictures and words remain as important as ever, shining a light on current affairs, cultural shifts, and the powers that be in a rapidly changing world.

Dazed

Emily Dinsdale

A new book, 'Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You', gathers together this seminal artist’s vast body of work. From the analogue paste-ups of the 1980s to her digital works of the last two decades, the anthology traces Kruger’s evolving practice, taking in the groundbreaking artist’s many site-specific installations, works on vinyl, and multichannel videos, among many other mediums.

Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/3/2021

Electrifying 'Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You' is a New Release this week!

Featured spreads are from Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You—easily one of the most engaging, relevant and graphically compelling books on our Spring 2021 list—published by DelMonico Books and Los Angeles County Museum of Art in advance of a highly-anticipated five-decade retrospective opening at the Art Institute of Chicago in September of 2021, en route to LACMA in 2022 with a related exhibition at MoMA spanning into early 2023. Zoé Whitley writes, “With the observational skill and rigor of a social anthropologist, Kruger has maintained a lifetime interest in recording human behavior in capitalist society, drawing on social semiotics and retinal perception to reflect our basest impulses and most selfish desires back to us.… Kruger creates situations where we can meaningfully engage in systemic critique as well as self-reflection. How often might we otherwise consider the psychosocial stakes of feeling superior or inferior to others? Of examining our own actions when looking down on someone else, or reflecting upon the circumstances dictating whom we look up to? A clairvoyant narrator confronts us, conjuring images in the mind’s eye of our vulnerabilities and those, unseen, who might exploit them. Caught between this proverbial rock and hard place, the viewer must choose where to stand between hierarchies of speaking up and hero worship.… Barbara Kruger doesn’t stand apart from the critiques she evinces, nor does she judge her audience for the positions individually taken to behold or to opt out. Instead, she optimistically offers, ‘There can be—and hopefully there is—separation between self-belief and narcissism.’ For all its black-and-white clarity, Kruger’s art ultimately revels in the gray areas, luring us into the nuances to be found in between extremes.” continue to blog