Bruce Nauman in the 1960s

The Castello di Rivoli will host, as the sole European venue, the first major exhibition to focus solely on the early works of Bruce Nauman (Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1941). The exhibition began its tour in January 2007 at the Berkeley Art Museum and will be followed, after Rivoli, by a last presentation at The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas in October 2007. Amongst the foremost experimental artists of the 1960s and 1970s, Nauman created sculpture, drawing, performance work, videos, films and environments in works that continue to echo in innumerable younger artists round the world. This exhibition is the fruit of research in close conjunction with the artist and many of those who were his friends in the mid to late 1960s, with a particular focus on the years he spent in California as a student. In the 17th century galleries of the Manica Lunga at Castello di Rivoli, some of Nauman’s most significant early works will be exhibited, including some that have never been seen befor e. Amongst the artworks on view are some of the artist’s first fiberglass and resin sculptures of 1965, some of his works in rubber of 1966 and his first work using neon – the ‘mapping’ of his body Neon Templates of the Left Half of My Body Taken at Ten-Inch Intervals (1966). The exhibition continues with the challenging neon spiral The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (1967), considered today amongst the most iconic works of art of the twentieth century. In his performances and films of the 1960s, Nauman highlights the complexity of the processes of perception – both in its psychological and physical manifestations and he explores obsession, claustrophobia, disorientation and confusion. At the end of the 1960s, the artist shifted his research towards the creation of sculptural spaces that cause effects in the audience similar to those experimented earlier in his performances. He created the first Performance Corridor in 1969, also on view in this exhibition.

The exhibition in Berkeley was made possible thanks to support from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

We are particularly grateful to the Terra Foundation for American Art for the presentation in Rivoli.

The exhibition has been organized by the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s
Kurator: Constance M. Lewallen