Bruce Nauman

Exhibition catalogues, monographs, and printed matter relating to Bruce Nauman (b. 1941) — one of the most consequential American artists of the postwar period, whose practice has moved across sculpture, video, neon, performance, installation, and language since the mid-1960s.

Nauman’s work is not primarily about objects. It is about the conditions under which experience becomes unstable: the body in constrained space, language turned against itself, the studio as a site of repetition and failure, the viewer implicated in a system they did not choose to enter. His corridor works, neon signs, video loops, and acoustic installations do not illustrate these conditions — they produce them.

Publications gathered here include monographs, exhibition catalogues, and institutional studies that have shaped the critical and historical reception of his work — from early Castelli-era documentation through to major retrospective publications. Each object carries Nauman’s practice into another form: image, essay, reproduction, index, and the handled weight of the book itself.

  • Monograph front cover, Bruce Nauman: Spatial Encounters, Constance M. Lewallen and Dore Bowen, University of California Press, 2019. Sealed in distributor shrinkwrap. Dark teal-green ground. Full-bleed black-and-white photograph — Bruce Nauman standing inside a narrow corridor installation, fluorescent light strip overhead, mirror surfaces on either side producing infinite reflection; figure slightly off-centre, looking toward camera. Upper left: white sans-serif — 'Constance M. Lewallen / Dore Bowen'. Monograph back cover, Bruce Nauman: Spatial Encounters, University of California Press, 2019. Sealed in distributor shrinkwrap. Dark teal-green ground. Full-bleed photograph — narrow corridor installation, single vertical strip of light at centre, reflective floor, deep spatial recession. Right column: two endorsement quotes — Anne M. Wagner, Professor Emerita of Modern and Contemporary Art, UC Berkeley; Lawrence Rinder, Director and Chief Curator, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

    BRUCE NAUMAN — Spatial Encounters, University of California Press, 2019

    BRUCE NAUMAN — Spatial Encounters, University of California Press, 2019