Another Sculpture for Stuart Collection

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 UCSD.

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 will be 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 will be two running LED texts showing live current news feed from Reuters.

Another was commissioned by the Stuart Collection, an ongoing program of site-specific sculpture by leading artists of our time. It will be sited at UCSD’s newly expanded Price Center—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 will be 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, who now teaches at UCLA, taught in UCSD’s Visual Arts Department for five years. “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.