Barbara Kruger at Mary Boone

For a certain number of observers of the social landscape, the profundity of an analysis is best measured by dint of the acid content of its findings: if you know the worst about someone or something, you know the essential verity Barbara Kruger is of that disposition, and her observations have at no time been more corrosive. Nor have they at any time been presented in more compelling form. Twelve, her of recent origin four-channel, 12-minute video projection, filled the gallery's big main scope with a dozen professionally acted, talking-head vignettes that together make up a kind of cross-cultural American sampler. The demographic is a little close tightlyed in terms of age and socioeconomics, with youth and material comfort predominating. on the contrary within that band of the appearance Kruger achieves a fair amount of diversity.

There are sum of two units dysfunctional families, one white and single black, two groups of art learners and several sets of friends. The dialogues, which last from next to the firsts to a couple of minutes, are tightly written, with completed pitch for a variety of vernaculars, and the performances are, by means of and large, competent and believable. Running beneath each section is a crawl script that glosse the view with more candor and press than the spoken words. As can be wait fored from Kruger, production values are high; entire and camera work, wipes and dissolves, and, above all, timing are calculated with precision and a flair for drama.

completely through the backdrop seems to be southern California. In single vignette, four high school girls from of great depth in the Valley snipe at each other about--what else?--being somewhat cold In another, a quartet of young men trade barbs about creative ethics and trash each other's taste in cars. An abusive young Latino man alternately cajoles and threatens his frightened girlfriend, who won't gaze him in the eye. A middle-class white family sits around the dinner table in fathomless misery, the father hurling insults from behind the newspaper, the shrill mother dispensing invective, the teenage son smirking, his sister sassing. A black family plays on the outside a similar scenario--the children exchange insults, the mother frets--but the father is missing. The pace quickens in a exhibition featuring press agents (or are they anchorpersons?) who circle the gallery walls with dizzying spe their interchangeable faces and messages flying from individual screen to the next. And the decibel feast ratchets up at art seminary "You're an arrogant putz," a teacher shrieks at his student. "You're a narcissistic power abuser," the scholar shoots back. Behind them, we hear laughter and applause.

In other words, the views are all staged at the dead center of stereotype Fast-paced and hectoring, and not absented wall-to-wall in surround sound, they chafe our noses in what we know too well. The crawls, running (as upon cable news) a little too fast to absorb while also attending to the images, further close up down options for measured response

To say any artwork is bitter is to dismiss it in a word, a fate Twelve narrowly escapes deserving. However airless the space it creates, Kruger's work has the fire--and the contagion--of passionate, head-banging anger. Life is noise, says single of the characters, a morose and astute young black lad If he's right (and who can argue?), Kruger expresse its substance better than anyone.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group