INDEPENDENT NEW YORK 2026

For this year’s Independent, Sprüth Magers has been invited to create a special presentation of Gretchen Bender’s TV Text & Image works. Bender (1951–2004) was an influential figure in late twentieth-century American art and a key observer of the effects of mass media on the human experience. Both realized as nimble single-screen works confronting domestic television consumption, as well as public site-specific arrangements, Bender’s TV Text & Image series was not only a major part of her artistic output throughout the late 1980s and early 90s, it also played a significant role in her attempt to draw attention to her concern about passive viewership in a corporate, capitalistic media landscape. Powerful and efficient, Bender’s TV Text & Image series simply superimposes carefully chosen phrases, applied to the screen in black vinyl text, over live broadcast media sources.