Kristin Bauer

The first book devoted to the work of an artist whose practice touches on historical propaganda, psychological research, and marketing.

An artist who creates installations, sculptures, performances, and paintings, Kristin Bauer aims to erase motive and abstract persuasion. Intrigued by forms of social influence—from political propaganda to psychology to consumer messaging—Bauer borrows the language and look of corporate marketing to explore the ways words and images collude to shape our beliefs. Quotations, familiar sayings, and provocations appear over mirrors, on flags, and wrapped around buildings.

Kristin Bauer: This Is Like That, a limited-edition art book with translucent pages and an acetate jacket, archives the artist’s work from 2017 to 2020. Essays by Ginger Shulick Porcella, Deborah H. Sussman, and Rachel Zebro—as well as an artist-curator dialogue with Lauren R. O’Connell—examine Bauer’s historic and contemporary influences to discuss what makes her work so relevant today. Designed by Alexander Kohnke and Bauer herself, the object includes referential ephemera spanning print, silent film, marketing, and propaganda to capture the materiality and themes of the artist’s work.