Strolling through Kensington Gardens on a quiet January morning before stepping into Barbara Kruger's recently opened exhibition will leave your senses in disarray.
Inside Serpentine Galleries, Kruger's signature bold, white sans-serif type on red contends with a mish-mash of music, voices, and Big Ben chimes—for a full sensory bombardment.
It's hard to know where to look. Rooms flooded with words wrapping around walls from ceiling to floor leave no space for respite. Ambiguous drawls, false facts, and indisputable truths clamour from speakers in every room, doubling down on visitors already overwhelmed minds.
Kruger, known for exploring themes of consumer culture, power dynamics, politics, and control, continues in Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You. (1 February–17 March 2024). She exposes how we are to one another, narrating a commentary on the way we live now.
London is the current host for Kruger's exhibition, the fourth iteration since showing in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. Here, the artist reconfigures her fusion of visual culture to fit the Serpentine's original building. There's even a London taxi parked out front, its classic black enamel covered in Kruger's trademark black-and-white font.
