Bruce Nauman's "Elusive Signs" at Andy Warhol Museum

Thursday, 27 September 2007 21:50

PITTSBURGH, PA - The exhibition, Elusive Signs: Bruce Nauman Works with Light, is on view at The Andy Warhol Museum from September 30 – December 30, 2007 and includes 16 works by the renowned light artist Bruce Nauman. Elusive Signs: Bruce Nauman Works with Light was curated by Joseph D. Ketner II, chief curator, Milwaukee Art Museum and organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum. The exhibition is sponsored by Andy and Carlene Ziegler.

Nauman, born in 1941, in his earliest works chose to work with non-traditional art media, including light. Elusive Signs focuses on Nauman’s neons and light-room installations created over the first two decades of his career (1965–1985). As a young artist in the 1960s, Nauman abandoned painting and rebelled against traditional art, stating, “It seems to me that painting is not going to get us anywhere, and most sculpture is not going to either, and art has to go somewhere.” It was while working in his first professional studio that Nauman was intrigued by the neon beer signs in the shop fronts of his San Francisco neighborhood. In an attempt to subvert the commercial purpose of the advertisements, he 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.”

 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. New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman noted, “He inspires reverence, or loathing…It’s hard to feel indifferent to work like his.” Over the past 40 years of his career, the artist has worked in a diverse array of media, choosing the form that best suited his ideas at the time. In his work, including his light works, the artist utilizes words and word play — anagrams, palindromes, reversals, and puns—in which he rearranges letters and phrases to create new expressions. Nauman’s work often offers harsh and humorous socio-political commentary. Hanged Man (1985) makes a playful reference to the children’s word game while providing a biting criticism of current human rights abuses in South America and Southeast Asia. With these neons Nauman acknowledges the power of images to convey ideas.

Visitors to Elusive Signs may recall Nauman’s Having Fun/Good Life, Symptoms (1985) which is in the permanent collection of the Carnegie Museum of Art. “Whether in the vernacular medium of commercial neon signage or his often frightening and ornery video works, Bruce Nauman plays upon American stereotypes and transforms them into dioramas that may seem horrific and predatory,” says Warhol Museum Director Tom Sokolowski. “It is such a rare opportunity to view this slice of the American scene in juxtaposition with Andy Warhol’s Americana.”

Bruce Nauman was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1941. He grew up in Milwaukee and graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1964. Nauman currently lives in New Mexico.