The Brooklyn Rail

Yes, it has been thirty years since there has been an exhibition of Bruce Nauman’s work in Los Angeles (the US retrospective’s stop at MOCA). It’s shocking, stupefying, and all that, but the timing of this spot-on selection of his early work in Marian Goodman’s refreshingly restrained Hollywood space could not have been better. Focusing on work from the early years when Nauman lived and worked in Pasadena, the exhibition successfully pulls off a double performance, presenting a selection of far-from-grandiose works that still embody the essence of the time and place in which they were made, while also providing a very present-tense clapback to those things that make too much of today’s art world—and I will use a familiar word from the midwestern town where both Nauman and I were born—chickenshit.

It is impossible not to reframe the specifics of these early works of Nauman’s—their language, materials, structures, etc.—against the disaster of the January fires in Altadena, Pasadena, and Pacific Palisades. These are places that sustained artists even before Nauman’s arrival, places where important art has been made continuously, and so much is now just gone. Thankfully I have never lost everything, but one thing I am sure of after living in LA for thirty years is that that loss is in no way performative. Nauman’s early work reclaims performance as a sustaining and productive endeavor, and let’s let that obliterate what ARTnews just characterized as the “performative but also slightly embarrassing” arguments anonymously made by some out-of-town dealers and “VIPs” against the LA art fairs going forward this year. I’d just as soon have them stay away from the work of those artists who remain devoted to what they accomplish in their studios, the very thing that sustained LA as a production town long before they realized it.

By the way, one of the gallery’s postcards for the show only presents this: “On the afternoon of Tuesday, May 12, 1970, Bruce Nauman went into a vacant Pasadena lot and clapped his hands.” I can’t help but imagine it was a slow, steady, clap.

Now the good stuff. To see today, once again, four of Nauman’s 1969 black-and-white videos in the first room of the gallery is to witness studio activities as anchoring as they are expansive. Revolving Upside Down remains the strongest because it reaffirms most directly the potency of the studio as a tangible yet perpetually vibrating place that is further activated by Nauman’s movements as he does just what the title says, one foot at a time on the floor, visually defying gravity but keeping it utterly grounded and grounding. There are a number of other works in this room: Performance Corridor (1969), made of two free-standing walls buttressed and positioned to face each other, leaving just enough room for a person to be able to shuffle their way in, make it to the back wall of the gallery, and shuffle back out; as well as two typewritten works on paper that convey very spartan performance instructions and a drawing, Untitled (Corridor Study with Red, Yellow, Blue) (1983). It is no accident that these works substantiate the durational and conceptual achievements of the videos within the simple yet generative capabilities of sculpture, language, and drawing. Combined with the works in the next room of the gallery—prints and other works on paper from 1970 to 1975 that extend the textual and visual range of Nauman’s command of language—the two rooms coalesce into what now comes across as an unaffected yet unapologetic statement of commitment and purpose. And here, another look at Nauman’s artist’s book LAAir (1970) reminds us that the Los Angeles sky ain’t always great, but it has not fallen yet.

The main gallery has been given over to two large works. First, Funnel Piece (Françoise Lambert Installation) (1971) is presented for the first time in the US. Basically free-standing like Performance Corridor, it facilitates our movement into its converging space while also impacting how we perceive both it and those things around it that remain in our field of vision. The star of this exhibition however is the “empty” room that has also been installed here, a work that literalizes it’s “then and now” presence. Called Text for a Room (1973/2025) on the checklist, its details are “Wallboard, text on paper,” and “Dimensions variable.” The room is a first-time recreation of its 1973 debut, newly configured by a text Nauman wrote that is available on a sheet of green office paper provided in a stack on a pedestal adjacent to its entrance. I don’t want to completely give away what it says, but I leave it here that the phrase “center of gravity” and the word “remain” are used.