Maharam Digital Projects is proud to support Barbara Kruger and Louise Lawler’s special projects for the 59th International Venice Biennale. The world’s oldest and most prestigious international cultural exhibition, the Venice Biennale was established in 1895 and alternates between a focus on art and architecture each year. At the invitation of Cecilia Alemani, the exhibition’s 2022 Artistic Director and Chief Curator of New York’s High Line, Maharam Digital Projects worked with both artists to map, design, and produce their ambitious site-specific wall installations.
Located at the end of the expansive Corderie building within Venice’s Arsenale, Kruger’s immersive installation, Untitled (Beginning/Middle/End), 2022, was meticulously configured and printed on durable substrate by Maharam Digital Projects to cover all visible surfaces—floor, walls, and columns—with disembodied black-and-white commands that implore the viewer to consider the fragility of their own physicality.
Lawler’s special project for the Biennale, No Exit, 2022, questions how art is presented, encountered, and consumed. Lawler layers her photographs of MoMA’s 2020 Donald Judd retrospective—taken after hours, in the darkened galleries—over the high resolution, full-color printed wall installation Hair (adjusted to fit), 2002/2003/2016/2022. In this work, Lawler digitally distorts the original image’s aspect ratio to match the dimensions of the space whenever it is exhibited, allowing the location to directly inform the artwork. Produced using Maharam Digital Projects’ advanced digital printing capabilities, the disorienting image envelops all four walls of the Central Pavilion’s old gymnasium space as well as a freestanding wall that blocks the viewer’s sightline, drawing them further into the installation.
The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani, is on view until November 27, 2022.
About Barbara Kruger
Since the 1970s, conceptual artist Barbara Kruger (b. 1945, Newark, New Jersey) has been recognized for her bold graphic works that superimpose text over appropriated photographs to critique contemporary culture and consumption. A teacher, writer, and curator, Kruger has also produced audio and video works, architectural interventions, and public projects such as billboards and bus wraps to create provocative, visually urgent environments. Kruger has exhibited extensively internationally including solo exhibitions at both the Serpentine Gallery and the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London; Stockholm’s Moderna Museet; and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. She participated in the Whitney Biennial in 1983, 1985, and 1987 and in both Documenta 7 and 8 in 1982 and 1987. Kruger represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1982 and participated in 2005, when she received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Her current exhibition, Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You., opened at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2021 before traveling to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). It is currently on view at New York’s Museum of Modern Art until January 2, 2023.
About Louise Lawler
Since her emergence as part of the Pictures Generation in the mid-1970s, Louise Lawler (b. 1947, Bronxville, New York) has queried the production, circulation, and presentation of art in her selfreflexive images and installations. By photographing artworks within their environments—whether collectors’ homes, museum storage facilities, or auction rooms—Lawler considers both the economic and cultural value systems that underpin contemporary art and the constructed nature of the image. Lawler has had solo presentations at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Dia:Beacon, New York; the Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel; and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. She was included in the 1991, 2000, and 2008 Whitney Biennials as well as Documenta 12 in 2007.
About Maharam Digital Projects
Maharam Digital Projects is an ongoing series of digitally printed, large-scale wall installations designed in partnership with emerging and established artists. Initiated in 2009, the collection has grown to include over 100 projects with artists including Polly Apfelbaum, Teresita Fernandez, Spencer Finch, Liam Gillick, Marilyn Minter, and Sarah Sze and renowned designers such as Hella Jongerius, Karel Martens, and Paul Smith.
For more information, visit maharam.com or contact press@maharam.com.