ART CITIES: Copenhagen-Bruce Nauman

Throughout his career Bruce Nauman has worked with many media and materials. His practice ranges from traditional modes of expression such as drawing, photography and sculpture through neon works and video to installation and performance art. Nauman’s extensive oeuvre explores fundamental concepts like boredom, repetition and irritation.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Copenhagen Contemporary Archive

Copenhagen Contemporary is the first art institution in Scandinavia to present a comprehensive exhibition of works by Bruce Nauman. The exhibition features several of Bruce Nauman’s major works. The installation “Green Light Corridor” (1970) is one of Nauman’s famous works. In the encounter with the work the visitor faces a choice: do you want to, do you dare to walk through such a narrow passage? The feeling of claustrophobia and confinement is already there even before you actually enter the work. Bruce Nauman changes course several times in his artistic work. Many of the recent sculptures become installations or carousels, as Nauman calls them, with foam-rubber bodies that are normally used to stuff animals, “Hanging Carousel (George skins a fox)” (1988), is one of them. On the carousel hang 5 foam-rubber animals and a small TV screen showing a hunter flaying a fox, the construction rotates on its own axis, first one way and then the other, in the exhibition space. In 1990 Nauman created a series of three video installations in which he appeared himself. The series has the overall title “Raw Material”, while the individual works bear the subtitles “BRRR”, “MMMM” and “OK OK OK”.  In the exhibition in on presentations “Raw Material BRRR” that consists of two TV screens one above the other and a wall projection. The works shows a film of the artist’s face on the two TV screens as well as a large wall projection, also of Nauman’s head. Normally we expect faces to talk to us but not here. The only sound that comes from the rather ravaged, trembling head is a wordless ejaculation “BRRR”, repeated again and again. The sound seems quite random and meaningless and because of its intensity and persistence the sound affects the viewer with such violence that you cannot bear to stay in the space for very long.

Info: Copenhagen Contemporary, Trangravsvej 10-14, Copenhagen, Duration: 25/8-22/12/16, Days & Hours: Mon-sun 11:00-21:00, http://cphco.org