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Barbara Kruger at Mary Boone
Art in America, June-July, 2004 by Nancy Princenthal
For some observers of the social landscape, the depth of an analysis is best measured by the acid content of its findings: if you know the worst about someone or something, you know the essential truth. Barbara Kruger is of that disposition, and her observations have never been more corrosive. Nor have they ever been presented in more compelling form. Twelve, her new four-channel, 12-minute video projection, filled the gallery's big main room with a dozen professionally acted, talking-head vignettes that together make up a kind of cross-cultural American sampler. The demographic is a little compressed in terms of age and socioeconomics, with youth and material comfort predominating. But within that band of the spectrum, Kruger achieves a fair amount of diversity.
There are two dysfunctional families, one white and one black, two groups of art students and several sets of friends. The dialogues, which last from seconds to a couple of minutes, are tightly written, with perfect pitch for a variety of vernaculars, and the performances are, by and large, competent and believable. Running beneath each segment is a crawl script that glosses the scene with more candor and urgency than the spoken words. As can be expected from Kruger, production values are high; sound and camera work, wipes and dissolves, and, above all, timing are calculated with precision and a flair for drama.
Throughout, the backdrop seems to be southern California. In one vignette, four high school girls from deep in the Valley snipe at each other about--what else?--being cool. 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 look 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 out a similar scenario--the children exchange insults, the mother frets--but the father is missing. The pace quickens in a scene featuring press agents (or are they anchorpersons?) who circle the gallery walls with dizzying speed, their interchangeable faces and messages flying from one screen to the next. And the decibel revel ratchets up at art school. "You're an arrogant putz," a teacher yells at his student. "You're a narcissistic power abuser," the student shoots back. Behind them, we hear laughter and applause.
In other words, the scenes are all staged at the dead center of stereotype. Fast-paced and hectoring, and presented wall-to-wall in surround sound, they rub our noses in what we know too well. The crawls, running (as on cable news) a little too fast to absorb while also attending to the images, further shut 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 one of the characters, a sullen and astute young black boy. If he's right (and who can argue?), Kruger expresses its essence better than anyone.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
