Since the 1960s, Bruce Nauman's radical interdisciplinary approach has challenged conventions while producing new methodologies for creating art and meaning. His rigorous, ascetic engagement with the existential dichotomies of life/death, love/hate, pleasure/pain has embraced performance, video, holography, installation, sculpture, and drawing. From the attitudes and forms of his Post–Minimalist and Conceptual work to his most recent sound installations, persistent themes and ideas appear: the use of the body as material; the relationship between image and language, art and viewer; and the generative interaction of positive and negative space.
Bruce Nauman was born in 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He received his B.S. in 1964 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and his M.F.A. in 1966 from the University of California, Davis. From 1966 to 1968, he taught at San Francisco Art Institute, California, and in 1970 he taught at University of California, Irvine. Recent solo exhibitions include “Mapping the Studio: Bruce Nauman Video Works,” National Gallery of Victoria International, Melbourne (2005); “Pay Attention: Bruce Nauman Videos from the Collection of Barbara Balkin Cottle and Robert Cottle,” Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona (2005); Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur, Switzerland (2005); Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin (2006, traveled to Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; Museum of Contemporary Art, Florida; Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, California; Musee d’Art Contemporain, Montreal, Canada; Australian Center for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; and Queensland Art Gallery, Australia, through 2008); Tate Liverpool, England (2006, traveled to Museo d'Arte Donna Regina, Italy); University of California, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, California (2007, traveled to Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Italy; and Menil Collection, Houston); Centre d'Art la Panera, Colombia (2008); Museu de Arte Contemporanea, Portugal (2008); Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Poland (2009); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania (2009); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Michigan (2009); Center for Contemporary Art, Japan (2010); Musée d'Art Contemporain Lyon, France (2010); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010); Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2010); Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen, Germany (2010); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2012); Göteburgs Konstmuseum (Gothenburg Museum of Art), Sweden (2013); Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, Spain (2015); Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris (2015); and Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden (Waldfrieden Sculpture Park), Germany (2015).
Nauman currently lives and works in Galisteo, New Mexico.
