The US-American conceptual artist Barbara Kruger has created a new, publicly accessible installation for the Rotunda of the Schirn, which covers floor, ceiling, and surrounding walls with the white- and partly red-on-black captions typical of her oeuvre. “I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren’t,” says Kruger, whose show is presented in the Schirn from December 15, 2010 until January 30, 2011.

Pictures and texts from the mass media, advertising, and the sphere of consumption provide the material from which she derives her messages: comments on the individual and society, war and violence, but also on popular culture and commercialism. Relying on formal precision and an unmistakable aesthetics, Kruger succeeds in formulating stirring, irritating, and pointed statements that thematize the relationship between the sexes and other social and political issues. In the Rotunda of the Schirn, passers-by will find themselves confronted with such dictums as “GEWALT LÄSST UNS VERGESSEN, WER WIR SIND.” (IN VIOLENCE WE FORGET WHO WE ARE.)