Executed at a seminal moment both politically and in Barbara Kruger’s career, Untitled (Out of your mind) and Untitled (In your face) from 1989 are t.mes less and bold stat.mes nts that questions societal power structures and the individual’s vulnerability to structural dynamics. Executed in large-scale formats, the present works exemplify the masterful interplay of image and text that brought the artist to prominence, and calls on the visual language of mass media and advertisement to create a bold and poignant commentary on the nature of modern media consumption.

On Untitled (Out of your mind), a man’s eyes are covered with a cloth, and a shadow of a scalpel hovers above his forehead. Captioned “Out of your mind”, the man lays under the knife, surrounded by what appears to be a nurse and the hand of a doctor carefully measuring the point of incision. The ominous clinical scene is juxtaposed against the right panel, which depicts a close-up side profile of a man holding a piece of steak up to his mouth. Placed next to Untitled (In your face) with the words “In your face,” the image is reminiscent of a still from an American advertisement depicting a homely dinner scene. A dramatic spotlight shines on the piece of steak, revealing the glistening surface of the meat and the fatty lining in its near raw texture. Placed side by side, the two seemingly disparate images generate powerful associations. In both compositions, the eyes are covered or cropped out, leaving the figures ambiguous with only actioning hands, faceless and devoid of any individuality. Measuring nearly four meters in width, the scale of the present work is similar to that of a billboard, the red graphic borders and white Futura Bold Oblique typeface further amplifying the advertisement effect. Adopting the graphic design strategy common in advertisements, Kruger conveys a powerful message about the proliferation of media and the thoughtless way in which it is absorbed and consumed by society. Kruger’s message from 1989 remains powerful, if not more so, in the contemporary digital age of endless social media and algorithmic advertising. Indeed, though they are not consciously in our minds, the subliminal messaging of advertisements and media are in our faces at all t.mes s.

The present work was executed in 1989, a breakout year for the artist when she gained widespread recognition for her iconic poster Untitled (your body is a battleground), which she produced for the 1989 Women’s March in Washington, D.C.. Kruger was a pivotal member of the Pictures Generation, a group of artists concerned with the critical analysis of mass media culture. Kruger’s signature black-and-white photographs with bright red borders and bold typeface can be placed within the larger generation of artists such as Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince, who also drew upon a layering of advertisements and cinema. Having grown up during the golden age of American advertising, Kruger began her career as a graphic designer for the Condé Nast in the late 1960s after studying under Diane Arbus and Marvin Israel at the Parson’s School of Design. Her industry experience of physically arranging layouts for magazine spreads gave her fundamental insight into the circulation and cultural impact of images. Having remained in the editorial world until the mid-1970s, Kruger’s knowledge of the “codes of seduction” as the artist would later say, equipped her to provoke and engage the viewer with pithy phrases and minimal words. In the present work, Kruger utilises basic image manipulation tools, such as rotation and cropping, to construct a simple yet powerful visual format which creates new associations and powerful messaging.

The close crop, monumental scale, dramatic grisaille and glowing light on the surface of Untitled (Out of your mind) and Untitled (n your face) illustrate the figures as depersonalised subjects of the viewer’s gaze, while the signature red borders transform the image into an acquirable and desirable object, a method intended to arouse consciousness of the art object as a commodity. The concise, evocative wording of the title forms a powerful disjunction between the implication of word and image, imbuing the work with complexity and multiplicity of meaning. Directly addressing the viewer through pronouns such as “I,” “You” and “Me” in bold declarative stat.mes nts, Kruger implicates the viewer in a candid critique, prompting us to question what we see and hear in the mainstream media, and to contemplate how these messages shape our identities and society. In her own words, the “direct address has motored my work from the very beginning. I like it because it cuts through the grease.” (Barbara Kruger quoted in: Exh. Cat., Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, Barbara Kruger, 1999-2000) The present work boldly confronts the relationship between individual identities and structures of mass media, exposing the inescapable conditions of media consumption involved in contemporary culture.