Bombarded by text in a monumental artwork

What’s trending in #Oxford? What’s gone viral? What’s the word on the street? What are all the cool kids talking about? What is the measure of contemporary cool? What ought we all to be buying into?

Well, if my online social media feeds are anything to go by, #BarbaraKruger @mao_gallery are the names on everyone’s lips/at everyone’s fingertips right now.

Well, the Barbara Kruger exhibition at Modern Art Oxford has had all of my friends and contacts whipped up in a social media frenzy since the exhibition opened on June 28; more so than any other cultural event taking place simultaneously (apologies FIFA World Cup and Truck Festival, but it’s true!).

Kruger’s celebrated career stretches over four decades and has percolated through art, activism, criticism, pedagogy and advertising. Harnessing her early training in graphic design and work for leading fashion magazines, Kruger, like her feminist, postmodern contemporaries Jenny Holzer and Sindy Sherman (all part of the Pictures Generation), has adopted the techniques of mass communication and magazine design, to explore gender and identity through her oeuvre. Informed by feminism and critical of capitalism Kruger takes inspiration from film, websites, magazines, and reality television, yet through her work Kruger encourages a healthy distrust of entities which claim authority, particularly those that have a bearing on our own individual freedoms. She’s best known for her iconic red and black text and image works, where fragments of images juxtapose short phrases or captions. Perhaps you recall the slick, sleek, high-end consumer/lifestyle magazine look of Kruger’s 1987 work I Shop Therefore I Am featuring a monochrome hand grasping the busty red slogan that reads I Shop Therefore I Am?

Director of Modern Art Oxford, Paul Hobson, opens the catalogue that accompanies this exhibition stating that Barbara Kruger is widely considered to be one of the most influential artists of her generation. And with such an arresting statement, comes an equally arresting exhibition.

Upon entering the Upper Gallery at Modern Art Oxford the visitor becomes immediately immersed in Kruger’s instantly recognisable work. Such bold colour, and dramatic presentation of text and image could only be Kruger’s. However, this site-specific work, Untitled (Titled) introduces new elements. It is exciting to see the inclusion of a rich, vegetal green as part of the palette printed on this epic vinyl wrap, and equally interesting to see the use of emoticons.

Just as the eyes of some portraiture has the unnerving ability to transfix and follow a viewer around the room, so there is no escape from the oppressive gaze of the emoticons in Untitled (Titled) accompanying the (more philosophically imbued than usual) declarations, and pulling their simplified faces.

Untitled (Titled) is nothing short of monumental. Like Kruger’s other work, Untitled (Titled) investigates strategies of power and influence at play in mass media and contemporary popular culture. Uniquely, this installation also responds to the distinctive quality of space and light in the gallery and of life in Oxford. Untitled (Titled) references the explosion of digital culture across online and mobile platforms, giving a nod towards the often invasive influence of such technologies on our everyday lives. At the same time, this work also presents a more philosophical trajectory, confronting the viewer with questions and declarations such as ‘IS THERE LIFE WITHOUT PAIN?’, ‘IS THAT ALL THERE IS?’ and ‘THE BRUTAL RELENTLESS FEARFUL END OF IT ALL.’ Jolly? No. Thought-provoking and life affirming? Yes.

Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford, Timothy Williamson, commented on Kruger’s letters: “The letters themselves are strident upper case, so plain as to exclude all qualification and nuance.”

Yet, the scale that Kruger selects, and the words that Kruger spells out are highly charged. Harsh by their monochrome appearance, seemingly uncategorised in the jostled way in which these labels are assembled, there are no shades of grey among these POSERS, THINKERS, INTELLECTUALS, and SYCOPHANTS. Ultimately, we are reminded of the need to categorise and label in order to make sense of the world around us, and at the same time reminded of the explosive potential of doing exactly that.

Bombarded by text, questions and declarations, I left this exhibition lost for words. It’s an exhibition that stands to tell a thousand stories. Unexpectedly, it reminded me of my grandfather; a Yorkshire farmer, a man of few words, who often appeared to talk in riddles, and left his grandchildren disquietly questioning their every action. Similarly, this exhibition is the most profoundly eloquent exhibition I have ever encountered. Catch it while you can. Once visited, never forgotten.

CHECK IT OUT
The exhibition continues until August 31 at Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke Street, Oxford OX1 1BP, 01865 722 733 modernartoxford.org.uk