Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman (b. 1941 Fort Wayne, USA) is one of the most discussed artists of today. Tirelessly and richly variable, he stages what his work is about: the adverse circumstances of human existence. In doing so, he keeps re-inventing himself anew – but his own body as a starting point remains a constant. Chameleon-like, Nauman in various media, from drawing through sculpture to video, while also using holograms and texts in neon lights. In ‘The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths’ (1967), a neon script in the advertising colours of Budweiser Bier, he ironically deconstructs the traditional idea of the artist. According to Harald Szeemann, the curator of the exhibition, it was not easy, even over the course of many years, to persuade the artist to undertake a solo exhibition. Such a show was conceived by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, toured the USA and was also to be seen in Madrid. Since Nauman’s in the earliest phase was collected mainly in Europe, Szeemann was able to expand this exhibition with about twenty loans from private and museum collections. The show followed on from large exhibitions with important artists (exclusively of the masculine gender), which Szeemann had achieved for the Kunsthaus since the 1880s, most recently with Joseph Beuys (1994). For Szeemann, who had exhibited Nauman already for the first time as a 28-year-old man, his obsessive preoccupation with virtues and vices and his taboo-breaking and relentless concern with his own body make him unique: ‘He works ceaselessly at the incorporation of the alien into his Self.’ In this way, since the 1960s he had created ‘new habits of seeing and sensing’ and had changed the concept of sculpture and monumentality. In his tunnels/corridors he furthermore turned viewers into participants and affected persons. The media response to the display of about eighty works from three decades was very broad and positive. ‘In a congenial way, Szeemann intensifies the compulsive and nightmarish qualities in Naman’s work.’ (Alois Martin Müller, Tages-Anzeiger). In the same paper, Simon Maurer even wrote of a 'cultural world event’, and Laszlo Glozer said in praise: ‘Szeemann relies on the event quality’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung). With the exhibition appeared the catalog edited by Kathy Halbreich for the American touring exhibition. The Kunsthaus published an additional booklet with the catalogue texts in German, an essay by Harald Szeemann and a list of the works shown only in Zurich.