Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis salutes Bruce Nauman ~ "Dead Shot Dan" |
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| Friday, 23 January 2009 04:15 |
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Greeting viewers to "Dead Shot Dan" is Nauman’s 1985 neon Double Poke in the Eye II. The pair takes turns poking at each other as the neon light alternates—becoming enemies in perpetuity, caught in an endless back-and-forth of mindless aggression. Like Keaton, they are permanently stuck in a bind. Each poke becomes a tiny victory, and viewers often find humor in these small successes. In the two-channel video Jump (1994), the artist has a succession of very short victories against gravity itself. Failure, self-deprecation, and uselessness—concepts central to Nauman’s practice—can often be hilarious. In Nauman’s rarely-seen video Bar Tricks (1995), a woman auditions in front of the artist, performing card-tricks. The illusionist, nervous in the audition setting, delivers an awkward magic show, never quite impressing her audience. Hearing the artist chuckle with each flashy sleight of hand, we laugh along. Nauman’s work is ruthless in making its audience into victims caught in uncomfortable places. But we still try to laugh our way out of it, particularly when the artist addresses and disparages his viewers explicitly, as with Pay Attention (1973).  This exhibition draws its inspiration from Buster Keaton’s physical comedy, funny violence, and sleights of hand, traits that appear throughout Nauman’s oeuvre. The title of the exhibition refers to the 1921 silent short film The Goat, in which Keaton plays an innocent hero who is mistaken for a criminal named Dead Shot Dan. “The 27-minutes of narrow escapes, disguises, and hide-outs are among Keaton’s most memorable performances and serve as an apt stand-in for Bruce Nauman and the way he makes us laugh,” notes the Contemporary’s Chief Curator Anthony Huberman. Bruce Nauman (b. 1941, Fort Wayne, Indiana) studied mathematics, physics, and studio art at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and then pursued an MFA at the University of California, Davis. In 1966 Nauman had his first solo show at the Nicholas Wilder Gallery in Los Angeles and in 1973, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art co-organized his first museum survey. A large-scale retrospective exhibition in 1994 was organized by the Walker Art Center and the Hirschhorn Museum, and traveled to The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Reina Sofia in Madrid. In the summer of 2009, Nauman will represent the United States in the Venice Biennale. Visit The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis at : http://www.contemporarystl.org/ Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~ |
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