: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. Nauman
has been recognized since the early 1970s as one of America's
most innovative and provocative contemporary artists.
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.
"This exhibition is all about the visitor's experience," said
Joseph D. Ketner II, Milwaukee Art Museum chief curator and
curator of the exhibition. "Visitors will walk into a darkened
gallery full of neon signs and fluorescent light environments.
They'll experience a disorientation of light and space, just as
Nauman intended."
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. There are approximately 15 works in the
exhibition.
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."
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. This series culminates
in the monumental, billboard-scaled "One Hundred Live and Die,"
1984. His largest and most complex piece of 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 American and Southeast Asia. With these
neons, Nauman acknowledges the great power of images to convey
ideas.
The museum is at 700 North Art Museum Drive. For information,
wwww.mam.org or 414-224-3200.
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