Tai Kwun Brings Asia Its First Bruce Nauman Retrospective

Asia’s first Bruce Nauman retrospective is running at Tai Kwun Contemporary this summer – a rare opportunity for local audiences to engage with the six-decade career of a major figure in contemporary art.

A highly-awarded and globally recognised multi-media artist, Nauman is often referred to as the artist’s artist; unlike Monet, Murakami, or Warhol, Nauman is not a household name. His work is not always easy to consume. Despite knowing that many artists are looking to create or find beauty, he is neither moved nor concerned by it. “My work comes out of being frustrated about the human condition, and how people refuse to understand each other, and how people can be cruel to each other,” he has said. Most known for documenting repetitive actions and turning them into looped video installations, Nauman isn’t bound by the medium – at Tai Kwun we find sculptures, sound installations lining the stairways, drawing and prints.

First announced by the neon sign “The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths” (1967) at the door, Nauman is asking his audience to consider, either seriously or light-heartedly, each of his works. Here, it’s the role of the artist, and in further neon signs, a play on words and letter styling such as RAW and WAR in a single sign and EAT which becomes DEATH, slowly flashing like a New York deli sign, a signifier of mass consumption and what those words might mean in relation to that. 

On the first floor are a number of the early performance-based video works from 1967 onwards, displayed on old square screens that befit the works’ era and create a sense of either strange intimacy or voyeurism as you watch. A close-up of Nauman’s mouth in “Lip Sync” (1969) which falls in and then out of sync with the sound, and which is rotated 180 degrees, brings a strange and uncomfortable sensation with it. The artist’s upside-down tongue first protruding and then getting sucked back in again as he speaks. Notably, “Walk with Contrapposto” (1968) shows a young Nauman walking back and forth, squeezed into a purpose-built twenty-inch-wide corridor, as awkwardly as the title suggests. 

Contrapposto, an Italian word meaning counterpoise, is a pose that was first known in ancient Greek art and notably revived during the Renaissance. The figure stands with their weight on one foot, giving the hips and shoulders an elegant torque – surely a form of classic human beauty, like the perfect Olympian. But Nauman shows us how unnatural and uncomfortable this supposed form of beauty is. All of these pieces come to life through commitment — filmed for 60 minutes, the length of the tape — and then looped without a clearly defined start or finish. It’s this endurance and discipline that helped to first establish Nauman as a pioneer in video art.

‘Contrapposto Studies (2)’ Bruce Nauman, 2015/2016, Pinault Collection & Philadelphia Museum of Art

Nauman would later return to his contrapposto theme. Made five decades later, the third floor boasts seven colour video projections of Nauman’s 2015 “Contrapposto Studies” (I-VII), with numbers III-VII shown side by side in a large room, their sound is scaled up for the space and they are larger than life. For this rendition Nauman has divided the screen into sections, dissecting the body into head, shoulders, torso and so on, but leaving the timing fragmented and imperfect, shown sometimes in negative and with seven side by side. “We wanted to unpack the story behind the work,” explains Pi Li, head of art at Tai Kwun Contemporary, and by the top floor of the exhibition, audience and Nauman alike have come full circle from where we started. The show at Tai Kwun is largely based around Bruce Nauman: Contrapposto Studies, shown at Punta della Dogana in Venice in 2021-2022, one of two galleries in the city owned by the Pinault Collection, the private collection of French businessman François Pinault. Caroline Bourgeois, chief curator at the Pinault Collection and co-curator for the Hong Kong show explains, “it was a big change for the Hong Kong show. We all realised that it was a premiere in Asia, and we wanted to have a larger spectrum of Nauman’s works.” In fact it took more than seven public and private institutions and private collectors who lent works to Tai Kwun Contemporary. A team of three curators including from two of the primary lenders was created to bring it all together. 

To create the right show, Li gave some consideration on how to introduce Nauman to the Hong Kong audience. “It is quite challenging and provocative,” he says. “Bruce Nauman is historically very important, however his work is oriented on the social, political — all the environments in the USA — how do we interpret and tell that story here?” While Nauman’s work provokes multiple reactions, thoughts or questions through multiple themes, notably the physical or word-based, works such as those in the Contrapposto series very much speak to a Western perspective and a Western history of art. 

“We have to give people a lens and perspective to understand the history of art,” Li says. “For us at Tai Kwun Contemporary, that is quite a meaningful thing to do.” But there is something about the repetitive physicality of Nauman’s work that cuts through any cultural differences. “I think all the performances from Bruce Nauman suggest a kind of meditation,” says Bourgeois, noting that this observation had not impacted her before this exhibition. Li reacts to the same sensation. “To keep repeating something, the inflated time duration [in the video works] – it’s labour intensive, concentration intensive, for one hour in front of the camera,” noting there is a parallel practice in Buddhism, Zen or Tao.

Li considers the post-pandemic era to be the second chapter of this burgeoning art world. “Hong Kong is a newly operating culture hub; it’s very different to Tokyo, New York, or London.” Compared to those cities, Hong Kong has far fewer artists per gallery but boasts commercial events, including art fairs, that support an impressive art market. It’s this boom that provoked him to shine a light on artists he calls pioneers, like Nauman. “In 2018 Tai Kwun Contemporary made a fantastic Murakami show,” he says, explaining that the blockbuster show presented a popular name who is Instagrammable and will easily attract what marketers call key opinion leaders. 

“It’s kind of normal museum practice in the last two decades because now we need major sponsors and major numbers,” says Li. But he believes the audience is curious and wants to understand more art. “We want to expand our direction. So it’s important to bring those historically important pioneers, who for many reasons may not be well introduced in this region,” he explains, promising that Nauman will not be the only exhibition of its kind. 

Exhibiting established and important international artists across the entire space is just one of three types of exhibitions that Li has in mind for Tai Kwun Contemporary. As a non-collecting institution, the museum will design impactful programs. “We will focus on commissions where the artist will retain the artwork,” Li explains, outlining that in the future he plans to have a breakthrough program, in which each gallery or “white room” can present one artist, under commission. 

“We commission from international artists because we are an international institution,” says Li. He also wants to transform how people in Hong Kong experience contemporary art, offering immersive experiences to create understanding rather than wow-factor. And finally he intends for a biennial group show, currently called New Narratives, that will present regional artists, creating a dialogue with the global scene, looking at how the region’s artists react to important global issues.

If Li has any concern, it’s in the past. He says Hong Kong’s big shortcoming is that it doesn’t have a long history of viewing art. But that can be easily forgiven. “Hong Kong has a diverse audience, people are open-minded, curious. Making a show with this kind of artist creation and curatorial creation, we can be recognised as superior to other places,” he says. “I’m quite positive, very positive – I’m the most positive person! What I really imagine is that Hong Kong will be a place to gather important works with fantastic narratives and a story relevant to our region. Geographically, Hong Kong is a meeting point of East Asia and Southeast Asia. We want to be an international hub – exhibitions we create and produce here can travel to other places in Asia.”

Bruce Nauman is showing at Tai Kwun Contemporary until August 18, 2024. Click here for more information.