Bruce Nauman (1941 -) is arguably the most influential artist at work in the world today. His pioneering explorations of sculpture, performance, film, video, neon and sound art have seen him investigating areas of art practice years before his peers, providing inspiration for innumerable artistic careers. Nauman has always drawn on a wide range sources for his own work, including the philosophy of Wittgenstein, the music and writings of John Cage, Gestalt Therapy, and literary sources including Alain Robbe-Grillet, Elias Cannetti and Samuel Beckett. He has collaborated with a wide range of film-makers, musicians, dancers and artists including Jasper Johns, Richard Serra, Meredith Monk, Terry Allen and Merce Cunningham. In 1989 he married the artist Susan Rothernberg and moved his home and studio to a ranch in New Mexico, where he indulges an increasingly intense interest in training horses. He has exhibited internationally since the mid 1960s.
Nauman will be the fifth artist to accept the challenge of taking on the cavernous space of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall in Autumn 2004, following on from Olafur Eliasson's mesmerising The Weather Project that utilised mist and an artificial sun to transform the space, and the vast, scarlet, trumpet-like shape of Anish Kapoor's Marsyas sculpture that stunned visitors in 2002-3. These Unilever-sponsored projects have become a bigger event in the calendar every year, attracting ever larger crowds and more extensive, international media coverage. The accompanying books, with incisive, accessible texts and dramatic installation photography, have been equally successful. Bruce Nauman will contain extensive illustrations of the works in the Turbine Hall exhibition, alongside working drawings by the artist and an essay by Emma Dexter that both surveys the works in the exhibition and provides an overview of Nauman's career to date. The book will function both as a record of a unique event and a key to understanding the work and motivation of one of the world's leading contemporary artists.
