Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You. at Serpentine South is Kruger’s first solo institutional show in London in over twenty years. It features a unique selection of installations alongside moving image works and multiple soundscapes. The exhibition is the UK premiere of Untitled (No Comment) (2020). This immersive three-channel video installation explores contemporary modes of creating and consuming content online. In the work, Kruger combines text, audio clips, and a barrage of found images and memes, ranging from blurred-out selfies to animated photos of cats.
Devoted to exploring visual culture and image production, Kruger is known for her work with imagery and words. She frequently borrows from the languages of advertising, graphic design, and magazines. Her practice often explores complex mechanisms of power, gender, class, and capital.
Barbara Kruger said: “It would be great if my work became archaic, if the issues that they try to present, the commentary that I’m trying to suggest was no longer pertinent. Unfortunately, that is not the case at this point.”
Bettina Korek, CEO of Serpentine said: “Serpentine is thrilled to present Barbara Kruger’s first institutional exhibition in London in more than twenty years. This show will extend beyond gallery walls to engage Kensington Gardens and other sites around London, building on a history of public art collaborations I am proud to have facilitated with Kruger in Los Angeles—from wrapping school buses with her signature larger than life graphic texts in 2012 to staging massive billboards and murals in 2020 for the second edition of Frieze Los Angeles.”
Hans Ulrich, Artistic Director of Serpentine said: “Barbara Kruger is one of the most transformative artists of our time. For her exhibition ‘Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You.,’ at Serpentine, the artist connects to the South Gallery’s architecture visually and sonically, and draws the viewer into the space, reflecting on context, histories, cultures, and hierarchies.
The future is invented with fragments from the past, and in her recent work, which is seen here for the first time outside the US, Kruger reanimates some of her previous works through puzzles, aerosols, and other distortions. Summarising her practice, Kruger told me in a recent interview that her art ‘is about how we are to one another.’ For more than half a century, she has created a commentary on living in our times.” For this exhibition, the artist has adapted works, which were recently presented at museums in the United States, to specific locations within Serpentine, both indoors and outdoors.
Untitled (I shop therefore I am), 1987/2019 plays on the philosopher and scientist René Descartes’ (1596-1650) famous words “I think, therefore I am.” The video begins with the original image being shattered into multiple pieces of puzzles, which are then assembled to “rebuild” the work. Once complete, the phrase in the centre changes from the original “I shop therefore I am” to other variations of it: “I shop therefore I hoard” / “I need therefore I shop” / “I love therefore I need” / “I am therefore I hate“ / “I sext therefore I am” / “I die therefore I was.”
The site-specific work wrapping all the walls of the first gallery, Untitled (That’s the way we do it), 2011/2020, manifests Kruger’s embracement of recent digital and commercial appropriations of her work that have all been posted online. It is a further variation of the work Untitled (I shop therefore I am) displayed on the LED screen in the gallery, as it uses the same image of a hand holding a placard, but in this instance the hand presents the different images and objects made across the years by other people in Kruger’s “style.” A single image from this work is also installed in the Koenig bookshop at Serpentine South, playing further with the context of consumerism.
