Public installations of Kruger’s instantly recognizable work have punctuated galleries, museums, municipal buildings, train stations, parks, buses, and billboards around the world. Her work is part of the permanent collections of the MoMA, the Guggenheim, Tate Modern, the Whitney, and the AGO, among other institutions.“Barbara Kruger’s graphic works—declarative texts juxtaposed with found images—point to photography’s complicity in reinforcing ideologies of power and control, in maintaining gender stereotypes, and in stimulating consumer desire,” says AGO assistant curator of photography Sophie Hackett. “In light of CONTACT’s 2010 theme, and as the boundaries between advertising, journalism, and entertainment shift and blur, it feels like the right time to consider Kruger’s potent messages.”
Born in Newark, New Jersey, Kruger trained at Syracuse University and the Parsons School of Design in New York in the mid-1960s before pursuing a successful career as a graphic designer and art director for such magazines as Mademoiselle and House and Garden. By the 1980s, she had transmuted that training into her artworks, developing an unmistakable — and unforgettable — style. Kruger continues to exhibit her work internationally. She lives and works in New York and Los Angeles, and is represented by the Mary Boone Gallery, New York.
http://www.ago.net/american-artist-barbara-kruger-to-appropriate-ago-facade
