barbara kruger: between being born and dying
lever house art collection, new york
sep 19 -  nov 21, 2009

between being born and dying is the latest installation from the artist barbara kruger. the piece covers
all of the lever house's windows, both inside and out, in addition to the floor. kruger creates phrases
that emote situations, interactions using letters, many as high as seventeen feet.

'I think what i'm trying to do is create moments of recognition. to try to detonate some kind of feeling
or understanding of lived experience. I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as
far as the visual presentation goes I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty'.
barbara kruger



following text from richard d. marshall, curator:

'borrowing from mass media's high-volume graphic punch, her black-and-white text questions the
viewer about power, gender roles, social relationships, political issues, consumerism, and individual
autonomy and desire. the exterior surfaces announce, 'know nothing, forget everything, believe anything',



'plenty should be enough' and 'in violence we forget who we are' (a quote from mary mccarthy). 
on the interior walls, reading clockwise, she continues with the declarative phrases, 'if it screams,
shove it, 'if it vomits, starve it'...
 


'the pronounced verticality of the helvetica ultra-condensed typeface accentuates the vertical thrust
of the window mullions, the mass of the skyscraper, and the erect stainless steel columns.'  



on these columns, kruger has applied phrases that read vertically rather than horizontally
and that complicate their readability:  'the globe shrinks for those that own it' and
'between being born and dying.'



kruger completes the total transformation of the lobby space by covering the floor with sentences
that read from opposite directions:  'you make history when you do business'
and 'a rich man's jokes are always funny.'

photographs by jesse david harris
 
via design notes