Barbara Kruger

1. The above image is a typical example of Kruger’s earlier pieces where they were usually a B/W photograph overlaid with declarative captions in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique font. The below image is a photograph of ‘Between Being Born & Dying’ (2009) an installation of Kruger’s. It is very evident she has moved away from the 'poster' type pieces and is now working with a very large scale installation. Although aspects remain the same e.g. Font, boldness of text she has covered walls and pillars of the Lever House in text. Kruger says that she wanted the viewers to experience her working their own space and be engulfed by the work. She has explored a new angle and changed with the ever changing contemporary art world. 2. I think the audience can experience spatial/installation work in a very firsthand basis. Viewers are able to interact by walking in and around the space and discovering it as they go. They become part of it and are enveloped into the work. Whereas a poster work has the effect of taking it all in at once and is very much a lifeless inanimate object. Quick and easy to experience and then move on. 3. Particularly in her earlier poster work she used a lot of pronouns like "You", "I", "Your", "We" and "They" which grab the viewers attention as it addresses them personally or we as a group, the viewer is included. Also the black and white use and the bold red and strong font all contribute to grabbing the viewer’s attention. Similarly in more recent works she uses a limited palette and the same strong bold fonts.


4. Over the past thirty years Kruger has not so much 'developed' her work but rather maintained its relativity and adapted as the times have changed. The biggest change would have to be the move from 2d and video to installation.

Kehinde Wiley

Intertextuality can be seen in Kehinde Wiley's paintings. The obvious western art history backgrounds and patterns are seen with an urbanized take on some of the patterns. The very obvious 'out of place' (as it would seem in today’s society) African American is interesting because the intertextuality of the painting challenges our original knowledge of the two social backgrounds we see and acknowledge in these paintings. therefore we are forced to question ourselves as to why we automatically think of the picture as 'wrong', the answer is simply that we were born into the knowledge that old-world elitist white culture is dominant it art culture and the white male in today’s world is dominant.


Wiley looks at pluralism, an idea that recognizes a wider representation of art, rather than the original emphasis of a single cultural group. So although pluralism is a good way to look at different art cultures I find Wiley is poking fun at the concept. I think he is saying pluralism is all good and well but it simply doesn't exist in this western world view of not only the art world but all cultures and societies. Wiley supports pluralism and looks at cultures other than his own in his works. I believe this to be a very smart move because not only is he fighting for cultural art to be recognized, at the same time he is practicing what he preaches. By including western art history and incorporating it into his creations he fights for recognition of pluralism and defies the typical anti-western artist.

Anish Kapoor

1. Cloud Gate - Kapoors 'Cloud Gate' also commonly called 'The Bean' is a public sculpture which was built between 2004 - 2006 and is the centre piece of the AT&T centre in Millennium Park, Chicago. The sculpture was inspired around the properties of liquid mercury. Kapoor often speaks of removing both the signature of the artist from his works as well as any traces of their fabrication, or what he refers to as "traces of the hand". http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/arts/design/20kenn.html?_r=1. Evidence of this is the fact that when the artwork was revealed in July 2004, it wasn’t completely finished. The seams were not yet welded and were still fully visible, much to the artist’s dismay. For him removing the seams from 'Cloud Gate' was necessary in order to make the sculpture seem perfect and readymade. What I wanted to do in Millennium Park is make something that would engage the Chicago skyline… so that one will see the clouds kind of floating in, with those very tall buildings reflected in the work. And then, since it is in the form of a gate, the participant, the viewer, will be able to enter into this very deep chamber that does, in a way, the same thing to one’s reflection as the exterior of the piece is doing to the reflection of the city around. –Anish Kapoor

http://www.millenniumpark.org/artandarchitecture/cloud_gate.html


C Curve - Kapoors ' C Curve is a concave mirror made in 2007 and is located in Brighton, England. His intentions were to distort reality and create the 'limitless'. When visitors look at it from one side it looks normal but when looked at from the other side the reflection appears upside down. This is caused by a concave mirror which reflects light to a focal point very close to the mirror. Thus the reflection appears inverted.


Svayambh - Was an instillation at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes and Munich’s Haus der Kunst where a huge beet red sculpture flows from one gallery to another, almost like a train car sliding through on matching red tracks. http://mocoloco.com/art/archives/004804.php. The material is a mix of wax and paint which coats the gallery doorways adding the impression that a vehicle like sculpture has moved through. It is titled 'Svayambh' which means 'self generated'. A constant theme of Kapoors removing any 'Traces of the hand' as it were.


2. Allan Gibbs owns 'The Farm' which is a large (1000 acre farm) which holds some of the finest contemporary sculpture in the world. Kapoor’s first outdoor sculpture in fabric, “The Farm” (the sculpture is named after its site), is designed to withstand the high winds that blow inland from the Tasman Sea off the northwest coast of New Zealand’s North Island.


3. "The Farm' is located on Allan Gibbs private outdoor art collection in Kaipara. In 2009 Gibbs commissioned Kapoor to create a sculpture for his site. Kapoor came up with a custom deep red PVC-coated polyester fabric, two ellipses one horizontal and one vertical with longitudinal mono-filament cables between the two ellipses creating a perfect circle in the centre of the sculpture and distorting and twisting the fabric to create the unique shape of the sculpture. It is made to withstand the wind that blows in from the Tasman Sea but it also enhances the sculpture giving it a 'breath' of life if you will, it seems alive.


4. My favorite work by Kapoor is 'Svayambh'. This instillation/sculpture is so interesting as it creates itself in a sense and makes me feel uneasy as I watch it being 'squished' through the doorways of the gallery. I feel as if I should stop it because it feels like it is doing something which is physically impossible and either the walls are going to break or it will.