Silences

If Bruce Nauman along with Nam June Paik and Vito Acconci figures among the pioneers of video art, his work cannot be classified to one particular group or medium. He experiments with all, by proposing complex environments and the multi-sensorial, combining video, sound, sculpture, photography and holograms to better ascertain the idea that range of thought communicates with art through sensitive experience. Shit in your Hat-Head on a Chair figures among the most disturbing works. In the background a chair is suspended in the air surmounted by a wax head, a video projected on screen shows a woman wearing a mime costume executing repetitive and humiliating orders as dictated by a voice, an evocation of mental torture used in totalitarian regimes.

Shit in Your Hat-Head on a chair, 1990
Video projection, wooden chair, wax head; variable dimensions
Collection of Contemporary Art Foundaciόn La Caixa, Barcelona

© Adagp, Paris 2009

Fot Wayne, Indiana, USA, 1941 – Lives and works in Galisteao, New Mexico