Untitled (You are giving us the evil eye)

A pair of eyeglasses on the page of an open book about painting casts a ghostly, high-contrast, black-and-white shadow while magnifying certain passages of text through the lenses. As if emerging from the book, isolated, scattered words are juxtaposed on the page to form an independent sentence that gives the work its name, You Are Giving Us the Evil Eye.

Since 1979, Barbara Kruger has developed a systematic photographic practice based on black-and-white images to which she juxtaposes red or black inscriptions to manipulate their meaning. Presenting her works as appealing advertising posters with striking slogans, she issues a sharp critique of contemporary society and the absurdity of its conventions.

Untitled (You Are Giving Us the Evil Eye) was presented for the first time by the Pinault Collection at the 2009 "Mapping the Studio" show at the Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi in Venice.