Pondering Thoughts
Exhibition looks at the thought-provoking and provocative work of Bruce Nauman
Review by Tatanya Lowed-Spence
Riddle Magazine was cordially invited to the private viewing last week of Bruce Nauman’s Exhibition at Sims Reed Gallery St James’s. The gallery has a reputation for being one of the smaller print galleries that specialize in either post war and contemporary original prints and works on paper or modern art; past exhibitions have hosted work from Andy Warhol and Roy Lichenstein.
Bruce Nauman is considered as one of 1960s America’s artists who has been at the forefront of contemporary and modern art that challenges convention with his elusive and thought-provoking styles using a broad range of mediums that are intended to engage all the human’s five senses.
The exhibition is principally in the form of the 1970s printmaking in which he continued to explore language principally in reversal and marrying word play. If intended, one can perhaps state that the Argentine author of novels and short stories, Julio Cortázar, who wrote ‘Around the Day in Eighty Worlds’, may have hit the nail on the head when he stated that ‘Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word’. For instance, the word ‘Malice’ and ‘M.Amphere’ were also shown forwards and backwards in several of his black and white prints.
Other lithography seen displayed were the prints of Suck Cuts and No both of which intend, according to the descriptions, to show that there are a ‘fury and energy’ and that these words are meant to symbolize ‘deconstruction of language’ that ‘forces us to re-evaluate its function, separating meaning and appearance.’ If this was the intended message then one has missed it, the images do not much appeal and only serve to remind me of Percy B. Green’s nursery rhyme, ‘Man of Words and Not of Deeds’ that demonstrates that ‘a man of words and not deeds’ is just ‘a bird upon a wall’. Not that one is particularly endeared either to seeing Study of Holograms or Infrared Outtakes as there is something that makes one uneasy, though it can be argued this is the very point of Nauman’s work by taking one out of one’s comfort zone to a no-man’s land where one has to puzzle themselves out of the corner or find the exit of some conundrum labyrinth.
In conclusion, Modern Art like Bruce Nauman’s could be described as ambiguous or ecliptic, as one will either like modern art or dislike it, much like one reportedly does with either Marmite or fast food. It can therefore be seen as being a subjective viewing to the individual. 
Enquiries: Sims Reed Gallery; (30 Bury Street, St James’s, London SW1Y 6AU/ +44 (0)207 930 5111 / [email protected]/ www.gallery.simsreed.com/exhibitions)