Artist Barbara Kruger has a new show at the Guggenheim in Bilbao

In Barbara Kruger: Another day. Another night, visitors explore the deceptive depth of a punchy phrase and speak the language of visual art. 

For nearly sixty years, conceptual artist Barbara Kruger has examined the relationship between words and visual art. It is a nuanced union: Kruger plays both Mad Men and cultural philosopher; the literary bleeds into the visual; punchy, shallow advertising sensibilities interact with a deeper, more cerebral line of questioning, “[exploring] the power of words and images to question the structures that shape our daily lives—identity, desire, truth, and control.” Kruger’s work draws upon a similar method to Hemingway’s iceberg writing theory: the brief, iconic phrasing merely suggests the deeper message. The viewer’s job is to engage with the work further and come to their own conclusions. With Barbara Kruger: Another day. Another night, Spain’s first major comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work at Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, the artist and viewer are conversing directly, and the lines further blur. 

Visitors are “[immersed] in a charged visual and sonic environment” as they explore Kruger’s transmedium oeuvre of video installations, large-scale vinyl texts, and other modes of artistic communication. Some pieces are bespoke and created specially for the Bilbao exhibition, drawing on the influence of the Basque region’s language and culture. Kruger welcomes museumgoers into her internal dialogue as they form and navigate their own. There is no one-size-fits-all message; it is an individual experience, with a fluid, ever-changing impact. 

Like a collapsing Tower of Babel, art and language become fractured and personalized, meaning different things to different people. Kruger harnesses this intentionally: “Language is a powerful force, and it defines us. It speaks of hierarchies, of adoration and contempt. And it has a very site-specific element to it, [carrying] its own vernacular and embedded histories.” People are not unlike geographical regions, bringing their own pleasure, pain, and perspective to the art they interact with. 

Thanks to Lekha Hileman Waitoller’s careful curation, the exhibition is cohesive and engaging; the pieces communicate as much with each other as do the artist and viewer. Older collage works, sepia-toned and lo-fi in their aesthetics and construction, are in dialogue with the newer, conversely bright, assertive video installations. They form an ongoing narrative, showcasing the translation and development of Kruger’s art into the digital age.

Earlier works like 1987’s Untitled (Worth every penny) set the standard for Kruger’s simple yet opaque messaging. Pasted into a monkey’s open mouth, the titular phrase recalls a ransom note, crudely rended from a publication and stripped to its bare, blunt message of consumerism and valuation. It is as striking as it is obscure, enticing us to interpret it. Kruger draws on her own history and perspective, namely her earlier profession as a magazine page designer and picture editor. 

The exhibition opens with the cheeky, iconic phrase “I shop therefore I am,” overlaying an outstretched, grayscale hand. Drawing on René Descartes’s famed philosophical phrase, like Untitled (worth every penny), the piece illuminates the relationship between identity and consumerism, self and value. Like many of Kruger’s works, “[she] doesn’t simply quote; she reconfigures.”Shopping has superseded thinking in this modern capitalist landscape, and the things we own ultimately own us. 

The original phrase appeared on a 1987 vinyl screenprint, but Kruger updated the piece in 2019 into an LED installation, skewing it visually and perhaps interpretively as well. The recognizable work, now transformed into a puzzle, slowly assembles itself until, with a flash and a jarring metal clank, it reconfigures into a new, similar phrase. By disassembling the puzzle and changing the script, the artist dismantles this earlier belief and encourages viewers to do the same. 

Homepage image credit and top page image credit of No Comment Exhibition view by Aros Aarhus. Barbara Kruger: Another day. Another night is displayed between June 24 and November 9, 2025, at Museo Guggenheim Bilbao.