Bruce Nauman: Disappearing Acts

Schaulager, Basel, The Museum of Modern Art, and MoMA PS1 present the first comprehensive retrospective of American artist Bruce Nauman (b. 1941) in over 20 years. Opening at Schaulager in March 2018 and traveling to New York in October of that year, the exhibition expands upon the rich holdings of the organizing institutions. Spanning the artist’s entire career, from the mid-1960s to the present, Disappearing Acts provides a singular opportunity to experience his command of a wide range of mediums, from drawing, printmaking, photography, and sculpture to performance, film, neon, and large-scale installations.

Disappearing Acts traces strategies of withdrawal in Nauman’s work—both literal and figurative incidents of removal, deflection, and concealment. Bodies are fragmented, centers are left empty, voices emanate from hidden speakers; the artist sculpts himself in absentia, appearing only as negative space. The installation proceeds chronologically (albeit with strategic pauses and breaks), granting ample space to the artist’s production across the decades. Nauman’s consummate skill as a draftsman, which has not been the focus of a retrospective since the mid-1980s, will be highlighted with a broad selection drawings, ranging from quick sketches to oversized, highly worked sheets.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Whether or not you go, the exhibition catalog,  Bruce Nauman: Disappearing Acts, offers a comprehensive view of Nauman’s work in all mediums, spanning drawings across the decades; early fiberglass sculptures; sound environments; architecturally scaled, participatory constructions; rhythmically blinking neons; and the most recent 3D video that harks back to one of his earliest performances. Authors include curators, artists and historians of art, architecture and film, focusing on topics that have been largely neglected, such as the architectural models that posit real or imaginary sites as models for ethical inquiry and mechanisms of control. An introductory essay explores Nauman’s many acts of disappearance, withdrawal and deflection as central formal and intellectual concerns, and other contributions discuss individual objects or themes that persist throughout the artist’s career, including the first extensive essay on Nauman as a photographer and the first detailed treatment on the role of color in his work. 

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