the art of public address - artist Barbara Kruger - Interview - Cover Story

Barbara Kruger discusses her of recent origin figurative sculptures and multimedia installation, scans her recent public commissions and throw backs on her early career.

Barbara Kruger is the bard laureate of the age of spectacle. Since her signature r black and white graphics first appeared in the early 1980 they have become a familiar vicinity in the world of contemporary art as well as upon the street. Direct address is her tool, and her target is "you"--the collective bring under rule created and sustained by mass media. Cutting [i]or[/i] part of to the other the clutter of our image-saturated world, Kruger's work grabs us through the collar and booms, "Don't be a jerk" (This is the Krugerian graphic emblazoned upon the coffee mug from which I drank while conducting this interview.)

In November Kruger will not away new work in New York for the first time in four years, showing figurative statuarys fan innovation for her) at Mary Boone Gallery uptown and a multimedia environment at Jeffrey Deitch's novel space downtown. For the duration of the exhibitions, a city bus overspreaded with quotations chosen by Kruger will tread on the heels of a regular route between Queen and Manhattan--further evidence of her unwillingness to confine her work to any single place or category. A filled retrospective of her work is being organized through the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art for late 1999 The following conversation took place last summer while Kruger was preparing her fresh York shows.

Thyrza Nichols Goodeve: You now live half the year in LA and half in fresh York. As a resident of the two cities, how would you characterize them?

Barbara Kruger: If greatest in quantity American cities are about the consumption of tillage Los Angeles and New York are about the production of culture--not solitary national culture but global tillage You can make good art anywhere. on the contrary these two towns have an incredible density of cultural producers: tribe who migrate to them in order to define themselves [i]or[/i] part of to the other their work. And both places are motored by the agency of the uses and abuses of power. That makes them real compelling and very scary.

TNG: on the other hand as an artist one can live in LA now without "missing" anything.

BK: It has changed. You don't have to live in novel York to get on with your career. When I first taught at CalArts in the early '80 many scholars felt they had to head east, in spite of race like Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, Michael Asher, Alexis Smith, Allen Ruppersberg and many more who had chosen to stay in LA Now it's just not an issue. of recent origin York is a d splay case, while LA is like London in that it's a big art academy town. There's a massive scholar population, and in a favored nanosecond a young artist can be transformed into the hottest of the newly heated with simply a trickle of journalistic mentions. on the other hand I like LA for the botany.

TNG: You're working upon your first New York exhibit in four years. What goe into preparing for a exhibit and has that preparation changed above the years?

BK: Well, I don't do many displays Up until now, my museum support has been real sparse in that I've had almost no museum present to views and few museums have purchased my work. on the contrary that's cool, because there are apportionments of ways to become visible and come into the conversation. My work appear to bes to travel well and is comely comfortable in other venues, like magazines and newspapers and billboards. Besides, I don't think that constantly firing scopes with objects is necessarily the best way to move for me. I mean, I prove by experiment to figure out ways for the work to be greatest in quantity effective. The best ways for it to make its neighborhood felt. And I have no complaints. I've been true lucky. Also it's really expensive to make work. It took me years to save enough currency to make this show.

TNG: Really?

BK: family don't even think about that. They diocese things just suddenly appear in a certain number of fancy-schmanzy gallery space--like some kind of amusing magic act that you then decide to either have affection for hate or ignore. I think there are apportionments of ways to make useful work. You can throw big males at a project and make what more [i]or[/i] less would call crap, or you can work actual modestly with eloquently moving results

TNG: individual somehow assumes that an artist of your stature is rolling in currency and the new work just unrolls from sales. What makes the production of your work in like manner expensive?

BK: First I'd have to say that "stature" is an extraordinarily fugitive and transient sort of thing, which is rul by the agency of taste and drama and the whimsy of history. As far as "rolling in money" goe for someone from Newark whose family holded nothing and had nothing, and who basically grew up thinking I wouldn't have a saucepan to piss in, things have make go rounded out just fine, thank you. I'm living my life, not buying a lifestyle.

What makes the production of my work with equal reason expensive? The whole installation thing--the construction, the existences the technology. It really adds up

TNG: When did you make your first installation?

BK: In 1990 Before then I was making percepts but I always wanted to do something along the lines of an installation.

TNG: wherefore is the installation format with equal reason important to you?