Throughout his long career the American artist Bruce Nauman has worked with many media and explored a wide variety of materials. His practice ranges from more traditional media such as drawing, photography and sculpture, through neon works to installation art and performance. Bruce Nauman has been one of the most important artists in the development of the branch of contemporary art that involves the viewer as an active part of the work.

The works in the exhibition at CC showed how Bruce Nauman’s art functions as a performative arena where the exhibition visitor is challenged in a concrete or conceptual space. In the encounter with the work one is confronted with various stimuli, provoked either by the physical structure of the work or by a more cognitive disorientation. The exhibition included several of Nauman’s major works: a corridor, a hanging carousel with deformed animal bodies, a work from the Raw Material series, several of his experimental films, and a couple of neon works. This was the first time an overview exhibition of Nauman’s works was shown in Scandinavia.

Bruce Nauman (b.1941) is one of the most acclaimed living American artists. In the course of his long career he has had major solo exhibitions at the biggest art museums, and is also included in the collections of the leading art museums all over the world including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Centre Pompidou in Paris and Tate Modern in London. In 2009 he won the Golden Lion with his exhibition in the American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.