Bruce Nauman, “Untitled: Model for Trench, Shaft and Tunnel”, 1977. Charcoal, Chalk, Adhesive Tape and Pencil on Paper, 157 x 213 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum, Amsterdam
Born in December of 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Bruce Nauman’s artwork spans a broad range of mediums, including sculpture, neon works, photography, video, drawing, printmaking and performance art. He studied physics and mathematics from 1960 to 1964 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and later art from 1965 to 1966 at the University of California under sculptor and ceramicist Robert Arneson and painter and sculptor William T. Wiley.
In 1964, Nauman gave up painting to dedicate his work to sculpture and collaborations in performance and cinema with painter William George Allan and experimental film director Robert Nelson. He also worked as an assistant to landscape and figure painter William Thiebaud. After his graduation from the University of California with a MFA, Nauman taught at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1966 to 1968 and at the University of California at Irvine in 1970.
Much of Bruce Nauman’s work is characterized by his interest in language, the nature of communication, and the inherent problems with language as a communication. He made use of neon as a medium in many of his works through his career. Besides bringing new life to his assemblages of ordinary objects, neon connotes a sense of advertising. Nauman would use neon for his 1985 “Hanged Man” to emphasize its private, erotic imagery.
At the end of the 1960s, Nauman was constructing enclosed, claustrophobic rooms and corridors; upon entering, visitors would experience a sense of abandonment and confinement. His 1971 “Changing Light Corridors with Rooms” consisted of a long ,dark corridor with rooms at either end containing flashing bulbs timed at different rates. Since the mid 1980s, Nauman has worked primarily in sculpture and video, in which he developed both psychological and physical disturbing themes.
Bruce Nauman has been represented since 1968 by the Sperone Westwater Gallery in New York and Galerie Konrad Fischer in Dusseldorf and Berlin. His work is in many public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Brandhorst in Munich, the Soloman R Guggenheim Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, and the Tate Modern in London.