Artist Research:
Thomas Hirschhorn:
Hirschhorn is widely regarded as a leading artist of his generation. He uses every day and finds materials such as plastic sheeting, cardboard, aluminium, packing tape and magazine images to create a dystopian reality. The process of making remains visible and becomes a metaphor for the individual and collective struggle to establish democracy. Implicated in Hirschhorn's work, viewers are obliged to consume and reflect upon that which they may have hitherto been able to ignore in their daily lives. The disparity between the viewer and the bombardment of blown-up imagery reminds us of how distant and removed we can feel when confronted with such imagery.
Fionna Banner:
Fiona Banner, also known as The Vanity Press, is a British artist. Her work encompasses sculpture, drawing, installation, and text, and demonstrates a long-standing fascination with the emblem of fighter aircraft and their role within culture and especially as presented on film. She is well known for her early works in the form of 'wordscapes', written transcriptions of the frame-by-frame action in Hollywood war films, including Top Gun and Apocalypse Now. Her work has been exhibited in prominent international venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York and Hayward Gallery, London.
David Salle:
David Salle is a Pictures Generation American painter, printmaker, photographer, and stage designer. At a time when the art world had posited painting as past its prime, or important only within the confines of a new and austere minimalism, Salle along with his peers, were reinvigorating the form in bold new ways. Whereas modernist-era painting was rigidly fixed to the idea that a presentation of an image should stay as true to the authentic experience of that image as possible, Salle was using these same realistic based images as components of overall pastiche works that compelled the viewer to also see them as shape, colour, and form, pushing them onto a heroic scale hinting at Abstract Expressionism. This marriage of traditional figuration with Pop art's obsession for disparate images, rejuvenated postmodernism and Neo-Expressionism by creating within the genre a pictorial space infused with humour and theatricality. Salle's work in the field of theatre furthermore lent a sense that each painting was a stage on which actors - whether they be body parts, clowns, or furniture advertisements were all a part of a roving cast of subliminal characters in the ongoing drama of our lives. It is as if Salle's paintings are snapshots of singular moments within the constant stream of simultaneous superficial thoughts and visuals that perpetually dwell in our minds - non-literal and random bits hearkening to the beauty of ambiguity.
Barbara Kruger:
Barbara Kruger (born January 26, 1945) is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captions, stated in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed text. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they", addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, consumerism, and sexuality. Kruger's artistic mediums include photography, sculpture, graphic design, architecture, as well as video and audio installations. Addressing issues of language and sign, Kruger has often been grouped with such feminist postmodern artists as Jenny Holzer, Sherrie Levine, Martha Rosler, and Cindy Sherman. Like Holzer and Sherman she uses the techniques of mass communication and advertising to explore gender and identity. She discusses her interest in representing "how we are to one another" and the "broad sort of scope" this provides for her work. Kruger is considered part of the Pictures Generation. Much of Kruger's work pairs found photographs with pithy and assertive text that challenges the viewer, known as word art. Her method includes developing her ideas on a computer, later transferring the results (often billboard-sized) into printed images. Examples of her instantly recognizable slogans include "I shop therefore I am", "Your body is a battleground", and "You are not yourself" appearing in her signature white letters against a red background. Most of her work deals with provocative topics like feminism, consumerism, and individual autonomy and desire, frequently appropriating images from mainstream magazines and using her bold phrases to frame them in a new context. Kruger has said that "I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren't." A recurring element in her work is the appropriation and alteration of existing images. In describing her use of appropriation, Kruger states: Pictures and words seem to become the rallying points for certain assumptions. There are assumptions of truth and falsity and I guess the narratives of falsity are called fictions. I replicate certain words and watch them stray from or coincide with the notions of fact and fiction.
Ambivalently Yours:
The anonymous creator shares her honest thoughts, feelings, and questions in hand-written notes of self-expression that seek to crush female stereotypes imposed by society today. A few years ago, Ambivalently Yours started drawing her feelings while working, as her own act of resistance against her employers, the fashion industry and the patriarchal society, which led to the creation of her Tumblr page as a platform to share them. Since then, her amazing work that breaks the binaries of what is expected of a female today, creates a powerful space for women not only to celebrate their contradictions but also to crush sexism by all means. The artist herself talks about her project on her site: “In 2011, I started a series of ambivalent drawings, which I worked on in hiding when I felt frustrated at my job. Drawing became my own subversive act of resistance against my employers, the fashion industry, and the patriarchal machine. I stole computer paper and company time to draw out my frustrations and channel my anger into something tangible. I soon realized I was able to express certain thoughts and emotions more clearly through the act of drawing, than by solely using text.” As her work grew in popularity, she started taking requests from people who wanted to see their own personal struggles and feminist questions drawn, so apart from her personal feelings she now illustrates requests on a regular basis.
