A few words that came to mind whilst wandering the small room: questioning images & texts, wordplay, puns, working through puzzles, chance, formulae, the process of work.
It was mostly about repetition - one work called Raw Material Washing Hands, Normal was formed from two videos of the artist continually washing his hands for an hour (the length of the video tape). Another, a collection of metal blocks arranged in various ways according to various mathematical systems entitled Enforced Perspective. The great booklet that came with the show described the mixing of systems as revealing "absurdities in the work" and making "logical systems gradually come apart".
"The Beckettian theme of repetition is a constant throughout his performative works and videos", says the booklet. Nauman's neon works, featuring selections of words turned over and over, recalibrated and rethought and rejigged are (literally) shining examples of this.
All these repetitions increasingly appear to question the object's (or idea's) inherent-ness. What makes a word a word? What is the meaning of it? How are the meaning and its objectiveness connected? Are they connected at all? Nauman's pieces in this tiny exhibition seem to teeter on that edge of chaos - how far can one push a word until it's no longer a word, how long can one wash one's hands until the act is meaningless and counter-productive?
We also visited GoMA, currently exhibiting works from their modern art collection, and on a wall they had positioned a quote from Bridget Riley, in which she talks of "nature [as] not landscape but the dynamism of visual forces" and this, which chimes quite well with Nauman:
"colour and form as ultimate identities, freeing them from all descriptive or functional roles".
No comments:
Post a Comment