Barbara Kruger

Untitled (Kiss) marries Alvar Aalto’s classic piece of modern furniture design, Stool 60, with a newly commissioned work by conceptual artist Barbara Kruger.  Finished in Kruger’s signature black, white and red, this bespoke stool was produced in an initial multiple of 300 with a final continuation of a further 300. Each stool is hand-numbered and finished on the underside with the artist’s stamp of authenticity.

Barbara Kruger says of the collaboration:

This project has been a wonderful opportunity to work with Aalto’s classic piece of modernist furniture, while at the same time supporting the ICA, the first institution that offered me a one-person show of my work in 1983. I was honored, a bit intimidated, but hugely thrilled by both the ICA and the complex and vital city that was, is, and will always be London. The memory of that exhibition, the wonderful space, the excitement and buzz of the ICA’s program of visuality and intellectually rigorous public programming, its bookstore and crazily cool cafe, will never fade in my mind.

At Kruger's celebrated Performa 17 Commission Untitled (Skate), the artist took control of the common appropriation of her work by playing the game herself.  Her project included making street art and products using her signature aphorisms in bold, recognizable text.  Kruger created merchandise like hoodies, t- shirts, beanies, and skateboards for a fake Supreme-style “drop” and pasted slogans as a site-specific installation at Coleman Skatepark in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Following the success of this project, the artist designed her first vase to further benefit Performa.

Untitled (Vase) is imprinted on one side with the word CULTURE and on the other the word NATURE, thus continuing Kruger's sharp critique of the structures of power and the role of culture in a Capitalist consumerist society. The vases are cast in porcelain and stamped with the artist's name on the bottom.