‘Another’ Work
for UC San Diego’s Stuart Collection

Artist Barbara Kruger Featured in Meet-the-Artist Event May 27

May 8, 2008

By Inga Kiderra

“The meaning of life is that it stops,” Franz Kafka once said. And artist Barbara Kruger will have him saying it over and over again for as long there is a floor to the atrium of the newly expanded Price Center at UC San Diego.

Mary Beebe, director of the Stuart Collection, looks at “Another,” a mural by former UCSD faculty member Barbara Kruger, that adorns the new Price Center atrium.

The Kafka quotation and 32 others from prominent thinkers are part of a wall-and-floor installation entitled “Another” – the 17th work in the university’s Stuart Collection.

The quotes, from Charlotte Bronte to Malcolm X, are embedded in colored terrazzo rectangles in the floor. On the wall is a 40-by-80 foot mural of two clock faces, punctuated by rectangular units with two-word phrases starting with the word “another”: “Another day,” for example, and “another night,” “another sweater,” “another love,” “another life.”

Along the bottom and middle of the image are two running LED texts showing live current news feed from Reuters.

The work, said Barbara Kruger, who taught in UCSD’s Visual Arts Department for five years, “emerged from my familiarity with the [Price Center.] I know what the everydayness is about and wanted to address that in the space. I wanted to relate one day on campus to a larger sense of the world.”

“Another” was commissioned by the Stuart Collection, an ongoing program of site-specific sculpture by leading artists of our time. It is sited at UCSD’s new Price Center East – which was built to be a lively student hub and features an atrium with open architecture and a 350-seat dining space on the ground floor. The installation is visible from all interior levels of the four-story structure.

“The space is truly amazing,” said Mary Beebe, director of the Stuart Collection since its founding in 1981. “And I think that Barbara’s work is going to become a real and present part of the student life.”

“It will be impossible not to notice it,” she said. “It will be thought-provoking for years and years to come: thinking about how we measure time, thinking about the constant infusion and interruption of news into our lives. The quotes on the floor will create discussion and contemplation as well.”

Kruger is a conceptual artist best known for her images in black, white and red that reflect her early career as a graphic designer and photo editor at mainstream magazines – photo-montages coupled with provocative, stark and often humorous slogans, among the most famous of which are “I shop therefore I am” and “It’s a small world but not if you have to clean it.”

Kruger currently teaches at UCLA. “We miss her here,” said Beebe. “But the move gave us the great opportunity to invite her to make a proposal for the Stuart Collection [whose policy prohibits pieces from current UCSD faculty].”

With her work back on campus, Kruger herself will be visiting on May 27, when a Meet-the-Artist event takes place from 1 to 3 p.m. at Price Center East, Level 1. Admission is free.

For more information: http://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu or (858) 534-2117.

Media Contact: Inga Kiderra, 858-822-0661