I n Untitled (Tell Us Something We Don’t Know), Barbara Kruger utilizes the human gaze and direct address, two vital components of her practice that she has relied on for more than four decades. The present work depicts a large number of toy eyeballs, a particularly powerful and effective image that underscores the eyes as the key to our seen world. Even in mid-1980s, when the work was created, Kruger understood the prevalence of visual culture and anticipated its continued rise. In our image-saturated culture, the eyes have become the gateway to imagery, perception, narcissism, and voyeurism. At the same t.mes the text in Kruger’s work emphasizes the use of personal pronouns such as “I,” “You,” “We,” or “Us,” to address and engage with the viewer directly. The work was created in 1987, when mass media was taking its hold over society, catapulting Kruger and the Pictures Generation artists to the pinnacle of the contemporary art world.
One of the most astute cultural commentators of her generation, Barbara Kruger’s hard-hitting oeuvre contemplates how mainstream media shapes our identities and societies.A leading proponent of the Pictures Generation, a group of artists working in photography, film, video, and performance that rose to prominence in New York in the 1980s, Kruger’s work has been subject to critical, institutional, and commercial acclaim, most recently with a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York in July 2022.
A former art director and graphic designer, Kruger worked for numerous Conde Nast publications and later as a freelancer in the book industry. Her job was to select the photographs and typefaces before magazine copywriters would add text to her designs. She would often experiment with different word combinations while waiting for the writers to supply text. Before long her job as an editorial designer morphed into her work as an artist. In 1973 Kruger burst onto the art scene with her inclusion in the Whitney Biennial. In 1980 her work was subject to a solo exhibition at MoMA PS1 in New York, elevating her status as one of the foremost.mes mbers of the Pictures Generation artists and setting the stage for the remarkable critical and commercial success that followed.
Kruger’s previous career as a commercial designer would deeply inform her artistic practice. Her rigorous body of work was appropriated from mass media including magazines, television, video, and newspaper. Using hard-hitting text and imagery she delivered powerful social commentary exploring faith, morality, power, consumerism, and feminism. Kruger almost always works within a strict visual framework consisting of bold red, white or black text overlayed on black-and-white images. Working within these self-imposed constraints lends her work a repetitive and highly recognizable quality, much like the news media from which her practice was derived.
Distilling media, image, culture and social commentary, Kruger’s work foresaw the enormous expansion of the significance of images in contemporary culture. Her utilization of familiar visuals borrowed from mass media, along with her critical and subversive commentary, has elevated her into one of the most important visual artists of our t.mes . Untitled - Tell Us Something We Don’t Know not just includes the trademarks on which her stellar reputation rests, it also foresaw the image saturated culture that characterizes contemporary life, lending it a unique resonance and importance.
