SITE Santa Fe presents internationally renowned artist Bruce Nauman’s first solo exhibition in New Mexico, His Mark, running through September 11. The show features a collection of new and recent video installations, including never-before-shown self-portrait work and 3D video.
Since the 1960s, Bruce Nauman’s work has questioned the very nature of what constitutes art and being an artist. He is known for making his body — his hands in particular — the object of his art and a tool for analyzing the relationship between language and meaning. Exploring intersections between personal and historical moments of profound loss, the exhibition centers on Nauman’s video installation, “His Mark” (2021), consisting of eight large-scale 3D projections of Nauman’s hands forming an X on a table. Accompanying “His Mark” are two related works: the single-channel video projection, “Practice” (2022), and the single-channel 3D video projection, “Spider” (2021).
A new piece, “Self Portrait at 80” (2022), is shown alongside this series. Nauman often returns to earlier works or materials, recontextualizing or reconfiguring them — and in the process, arrives at new meanings. Shown publicly for the first time, the 2022 video repurposes “Walking a Line” (2018) and reverses all the parameters: The color is removed, the motion is reversed but the soundtrack is not, and the projected 3D image is flipped back-to-front and front-to-back. The result is a complete inversion of the spatial relationships between Nauman and the world around him.
“The works in this exhibition have nuanced autobiographical and historical origins,” says SITE Santa Fe curator Brandee Caoba. “His Mark explores the mournful implications of loss and its complicated rippling impacts through repetition and gesture.”
His Mark is curated by Brandee Caoba and organized by Max Holmes with Bruce Nauman Studio. It is on view through September 11 at SITE Santa Fe in New Mexico.
A full schedule of public programs will take place throughout the run of the exhibition.