Elusive Signs. Light offered Nauman a medium that has the quality of being both elusive and effervescent while aggressively pervading an environment with its message. The exhibition is divided into three sections, split by two fluorescent light environments (a room and a corridor). The sections are: early neons based on identity, word game neons and figurative neons.
Elusive Signs. Works with Light
Bruce Nauman deals with the big questions of life, in the words of his 1983 neon:
Life, Death, Love, Hate, Pleasure, Pain. Nauman’s work focuses on the essential
elements of the human experience. Elusive Signs: Bruce Nauman Works with Light,
premiering at the Milwaukee Art Museum January 28 - April 9, is Nauman’s first solo
exhibition in Wisconsin, the state in which he was raised. Bruce Nauman has been
recognized since the early 1970s as one of America’s most innovative and provocative
contemporary artists. The exhibition is curated by Joseph D. Ketner II, the Museum’s
new chief curator.
Bruce Nauman works in diverse media; this exhibition focuses solely on light. Light
offered Nauman a medium that has the quality of being both elusive and effervescent
while aggressively pervading an environment with its message. Nauman’s art is
motivated by ideas, not an attachment to a particular medium. Through the use of
neon signs, a public and familiar means of communication to relate an idea, Nauman’s
goal is to make the viewer think.
The exhibition is divided into three sections, split by two fluorescent light
environments (a room and a corridor). The sections are: early neons based on
identity, word game neons and figurative neons.
The first section in the exhibition features Nauman’s early neons on the subject of
identity. Working in his first professional studio, the neon beer signs in the shop
fronts of his San Francisco neighborhood intrigued Nauman, who became determined to
subvert the commercial purpose of the advertisements. In response, the artist
created Window or Wall Sign (1967) and hung it in the window of his storefront
studio. With this piece he sought to achieve “an art that would kind of disappear -
an art that was supposed to not quite look like art." Nauman then embarked on a
series of neons that grapple with questions of identity. Interested in the
philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and building upon his early performance works, the
artist produced Neon Templates of the Left Half of My Body Taken at Ten-Inch
Intervals (1966) as an innovative exercise in portraiture as sculpture. With My Name
As Though It Were Written on the Surface of the Moon (1968) he forces the viewer to
contemplate a signature as the object of art.
Two fluorescent light environments divide the exhibition’s three sections. The rooms
force the viewer into tight or oblique spaces with harsh lighting effects that
heighten the perception of space. The two works are the Helman Gallery Parallelogram
(1971), a green fluorescent light room, and the Corridor with Mirror and White
Lights (1971), through which the viewer must pass, providing spatial counterpoints
to the neon signs.
Language, signs and symbols make up the second section. Nauman’s work in neon during
the 1970s emphasizes the neon as a sign, presenting provocative twists of language.
He was acutely aware of the confrontational potential of neon when exhibited in a
museum or gallery and offered harsh and humorous socio-political commentary in such
pieces as Raw War (1970) and Run from Fear, Fun from Rear (1972). This series
culminates in the monumental, billboard-scaled One Hundred Live and Die (1984). His
largest and most complex piece neon, Nauman employs overwhelming scale to bombard
the viewer with sardonic aphorisms.
In the third and final section of the exhibition, Nauman explores the pictographic
potential of the medium for image-based signs. Hanged Man (1985) makes a playful
reference to the children’s word game while providing a biting criticism of human
rights abuses then in South America and Southeast Asia. With these neons, Nauman
acknowledges the great power of images to convey ideas.
Tour
After its debut at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Elusive Signs travels to Indianapolis
Museum of Art, Indiana (2006); Museum of Contemporary Art, N. Miami (2006); Henry
Art Gallery, University of Washington (2007); Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal
(2007); Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Victoria (2007); and Queensland Art
Gallery, Australia (2008).
Milwaukee Art Museum
700 North Art Museum Drive - Milwaukee