April 28, 2011
Barbara Kruger Hits the Road
The America Now and Here truck awaiting its maiden voyage.
Last night on Greene Street, this truck covered with words by artist Barbara Kruger was parked for a few hours. It was about to depart for Kansas City, the first stop on a long road trip cooked up by painter Eric Fischl and his crew. The project, America Now and Here, is an attempt to use art (including visual art, literature, and performance) to promote a thoughtful conversation about the meaning of America. Fischl was motivated, I’m told, but the current state of discourse in this country which is, as you may have noticed, pointlessly acrimonious and sadly degraded. (See: Donald Trump.)
The first exhibition/performance/conversation/whatever is scheduled to begin on May 6, in the Crossroads District of downtown Kansas City. It will be part of the general First Friday hoopla there. (I was happy to hear that my pals at the KC architecture firm El Dorado are somehow in cahoots.)
Anyway, I like the idea of the project and hope to catch up with the roadshow, maybe when it hits Detroit this summer. But I also love the truck, designed to be a traveling art warehouse, because I see it as part of a Barbara Kruger resurgence (which began, as far as I can tell, with her exhibition last fall at the Whitney Museum construction site near the High Line). I would love to see our nation’s highways filled with trucks bearing Krugerisms. (And, for that matter, wouldn’t big semi-trucks make a great medium for a national Interstate Highway Biennial?)
“Belief + Doubt = Sanity,” according to Ms. Kruger.