ArtSeen
Barbara Kruger
Mary Boone Gallery

In a video work titled "Twelve," Barbara Kruger continues her original format of combining loaded phrases with imagery. But she sheds the stylized graphics based on fashion magazines and the look of Russian propaganda art that sustained her oeuvre for at least two decades, and presents "conversations" between people in various urban and domestic settings, like luncheonettes, schools, and cafeterias. Twelve scenes of varying length present two, three, or four monumental talking heads of urban types drawn from racial categories: Hispanic, Islamic, Asian, African American, and Caucasian men and women. The scenes are further subdivided into students, journalists and artists, cliques and friends, and family relations (a white nuclear family and a black family headed by a single mother). All of the characters are played by actors to create a clean, mask-like look. Teletype texts of their thoughts run below each image and around the room. Most of the characters are in their late twenties and early thirties, and conversations often begin with critical or offensive remarks, followed by a counter attacks that escalate into unproductive dialogues that leave the protagonists either at an impasse, or emotionally drained and conflicted, between what they think (in the teletype below) and what they say.
The monumental format, and the bombastic yet crude dialogue of "Twelve" reminds us of our ills by displaying our symptoms. People are equally blunt in speaking with each other as in talking to themselves, from the white guys who criticize each others’ eating habits while boasting about their latest car buy, to the woman who blames her girlfriend for her boyfriend’s betrayal, to the abusive boyfriend who challenges his girlfriends request for "space" and then demands a beer, to a theoretical discussion between four artists/critics who display polarized viewpoints in sophisticated terms, yet can’t find a common thread of exchange.
Kruger’s position essentially remains a postmodern one. She is a pessimistic about our ability to bridge the gaps between ourselves, rejecting the idea that what is communicable comes from "grounds deep-seated and shared by men and women, underlying their agreement in estimating the forms of the objects given to both of them." "Twelve" contrasts starkly to the current of the Biennial’s mood of celebration for ideas about cultural freedom and diversity, as well as with Thomas Struth’s recent video piece at the Metropolitan Museum, where faces were projected as presenced subjects. Instead, with Kruger’s characteristic complexity and edge, "Twelve" mines the most polarized levels of personality, where aggression cannot be subverted by the unpredictable insights of unconscious thought.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES

Kent Monkman: mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People)
By Ann C. CollinsFEB 2020 | ArtSeen
It may be that history, as Winston Churchill said, is written by the victors, but a deep satisfaction can be had for those who redraft it. Cree artist Kent Monkman does just that for the Metropolitan Museum of Arts inaugural Great Hall Commission. Monkman reverses the European gaze, presenting Indigenous people as heroes who welcome and rescue invading newcomers.

The People's Demands Are Lawful: Jill Li's Lost Course
By Matt TurnerFEB 2021 | Film
Jill Lis longitudinal documentary follows the group of activists behind the Wukan Protests of 2011 and the ever-developing interpersonal dynamics between them as they transition from protesting political corruption to governing themselves.
“They’re Not Normal People”: Azazel Jacobs’s French Exit
By Madeline WhittleFEB 2021 | Film
An exceptional ensemble castincluding Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedgesrenders the absurd with singular emotional nuance (and comic timing) in Azazel Jacobss latest, co-written by and adapted from a novel by Patrick DeWitt.
Journey to a “People's War”
By Thomas DaiJUL-AUG 2020 | Field Notes
Some years ago, I stopped in Wuhan on my way to somewhere else. The city looked unremarkable to me, another heavy, Chinese metropolis split in two by a dying river. I remember the owner of my hostel stopping by to take my payment and photocopy my passport. Afterwards, he left for dinner, and I did the same, walking down to the Yangtze to sit on its grassy banks.