藝評

(A review of the art exhibition Bruce Nauman: An Artist's Artist at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong by John Batten, in English - Chinese coming soon)

Above image: 

Bruce Nauman: Silence +Violins = Violence, Graphite, charcoal and pastel on paper, 1981. Pinault collection, courtesy of Tai Kwun Contemporary (photo: John Batten)

Exhibition review:

Bruce Nauman: An Artist's Artist

by John Batten

The most satisfying section of the recent Bruce Nauman exhibition at Tai Kwun Contemporary was in their F Hall gallery. Exhibited in this gallery is a solid survey of the artist's videos, accompanied by a small selection of neon installation pieces and drawings. Videos occupying the entire floor space intentionally crossed across each other making a cacophony of sound and flickering video imagery. This presentation worked by emphasizing the feeling of claustrophobia seen in many of Nauman’s videos. As the main performer, Nauman is often confined in spaces and corridors, repeating actions and/or words, over and over. For example, in the black & white video ''Lip Sync'' (1969, 57mins), Nauman is filmed upside-down with the camera focused only on his mouth/tongue, chin and neck. While continuously repeating the words "lip sync", his facial movements take on a new form: his double chin looks like a nose and appears to be an up-right but eyeless face. The rhythm of the video with repeated words and repetitive facial movements is mesmerizing. At times, Nauman’s moving lips and the heard words are out-of-sync, creating a confusing perception for the viewer - and a conundrum: Nauman continues to repeatedly say “lip sync”, when it isn’t!  

Bruce Nauman: Lip Sync, single-channel video (black-and-white, sound, continuous play), 57mins, 1969. Pinault collection, courtesy of Tai Kwun Contemporary (photo: John Batten)

These early videos establish Nauman’s experimentations in word play. It is also seen graphically, for example, in a large drawing in a triangular shape of three words - VIOLINS  SILENCE  VIOLENCE, that evolves to become:  VIOLINS + SILENCE = VIOLENCE (1981). Such combinations of text hark back to early surrealist writing, and are contemporaneous with 1960s poetry and psychedelia. His work anticipates artist Barbara Kruger’s text-art and billboards-as-message and today’s ubiquitous digital messaging.

Bruce Nauman: Perfect Door/Perfect Odor/Perfect Rodo, clear glass neon tubing, wires, suspension frames (three parts), 1972. Pinault collection, courtesy of Tai Kwun Contemporary (photo: John Batten)

The other sections of the show, including sculpture, really needed more artwork to give the exhibition greater substance. Dominating the high-ceilinged third floor gallery were seven different versions of his Contrapposto Studies (2015/2026) videos, screened as – frankly, unnecessary - large projections. In these videos, Nauman walks in a classic modelling posture of ‘in contrapposto.’ We see different versions of the posture, and with digital manipulation Nauman’s body variously splits in two, detaches itself, or appears to walk in an opposite direction from which the body is facing. It is intentionally repetitive. However, having so many similar videos, the repetition crosses the point of instruction to become annoying. In a sense this is the artist's intention: to test the audience''s attention span and engagement with the changes shown in the body's movements.

Bruce Nauman: Contrapostto Studies, I through to VII (III, IV, V, VI, VII), seven-channel video (colour, sound, continuous play), various durations, video still, 2015-2016. Jointly owned by the Pinault collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, courtesy of Tai Kwun Contemporary (photo: John Batten)

Unfortunately, Tai Kwun's audience appeared tested. These only-slightly different videos were tedious; viewers, consequently, appeared not to stay long. In a talk to accompany the exhibition, renowned Chinese video artist Zhang Peili recalled first seeing Nauman’s videos in New York in the 1990s and the strong impact they made on him. Likewise, Hong Kong artists, ranging in generation from Ellen Pao (working in the 1980s and 1990s), Angela Su (2000s to the present) and Mark Chung (working in the 2020s) have also been influenced by Nauman's distinctive repetitive performances and videos depicting confinement. The exhibition might have benefited by also showing videos and artwork by these artists – it would have added diversity and local context and given further proof to the exhibition’s claim that Nauman was an “artist’s artist.”

Bruce Nauman: Setting a Good Corner (Allegory and Metaphor), single-channel video (colour, sound, continuous play), 59mins 30secs, 1999. Pinault collection, courtesy of Tai Kwun Contemporary (photo: John Batten)

Neumann’s video Setting a Good Corner (Allegory & Metaphor) (1999, 59min30sec) was placed at the very end of the exhibition. The curators explain that Nauman moved to New Mexico in the 1980s and it is where “his life and art fused.” In this video, the audience watches Nauman, as he explains, "building a corner to stretch a fence to hang a gate" on his New Mexico ranch. It is unfortunately a grainy, poor-quality, colour video, which detracts from an excellent depiction of slow, contemplative, physical work. At the start of the video Nauman shows a few printed slides in his own words – these are almost onomatopoeic, matching the slow sequence of simple manual actions we will see:  

"A good fence can't be built or maintained without a good corner.

You have to have a good post to stretch your wire tight and true.

This corner is built with good used railroad ties, 9' long and set deep. The cross pieces are cedar posts. Smooth rather than barbed wire is used here to avoid tearing up my shirt and arms and causing bad language to occur. The double diagonal on the north pair of posts is to support the gate to be hung off the outside corner to the west as you will see.

I learned this way of building a corner from the example of Gene Thornton, but my mistakes are my own, not Gene’s.”

Over the next hour Nauman, using a mechanical digger and various tools, slowly and methodically builds this corner of a fence, to hang a gate on. At the end of the video is verbal advice (printed as text) from others, his friends most probably, about the job he has done: “…After you drop that post in the hole start tamping soon enough with the sharp end of the bar….” The video comes across, then, as purely instructional. Or, does it?

A city dweller – unless a builder themselves - would find the construction of this fence incomprehensible. Therein lies a twist, and summarizes Nauman’s entire artistic output: even daily real actions can be odd; as odd, sometimes, as art. That is always a refreshing understanding – but, I suspect the audience had already left.

Bruce Nauman: An Artist''s Artist

Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong

15 May to 18 August 2024