Nauman created four new pieces for the show. A one large dual screen video/sound piece and one single channel video on the ground floor and two sound works for the upper floors. The ground floor piece, titled “For Beginners (all the combinations of the thumb and fingers)”, was a dual massive video projection taking up the entire double height wall. The galleries description:
A video and sound installation featuring two large, stacked projections of the artist’s hands, which are set against either a black or white backdrop, and projected either right-side up, or upside down. The movement of Nauman’s hands is in response to verbal instructions provided by his recorded voice. Nauman systematically lists all possible combinations of the four fingers and the thumb. There are 31 different combinations for each hand. Each video source is synchronized with its respective audio feed – but the two video loops (and their respective audio feeds) are not synchronized… resulting in many combinations.
For me, to see Nauman hand’s in such great detail doing simple combinations was the most impressive element. To see the hands of “the greatest living artists of our time” conducting the most simple movements was humbling. However powerful the piece was, the limitations of the space were troubling in hindsight.
On the third level of the gallery was a clean, square, white gallery with multiple hidden speakers playing the piece “For Children”. The gallery had a lot less to say about this piece:
A sound installation within a room. Nauman speaks the words “For Children,” “For Children,” “For Children,” repeatedly.
Sound installations are not the easiest art to experience. Obviously there is no visual element to these works and therefore you are forced to use a sense you might not have been expecting to. The repetitive of the words and the change in his tone were the two elements that stayed with me. Listening to the words “for children” over and over again made me immediately think of non-profits that work to help youth in a multitude of aspects. And by repeating the words, they almost seemed silly, like a slogan or phrase that people just say but has little meaning behind it (in fact, it made me think of an earlier Nauman work “a rose has no teeth”). Also in the video below you can hardly make out what he is saying. Again, I found this fascinating and a subtle but telling expression of how people throw out certain phrases or opinions without thinking about what we are saying. More importantly the work also explores how in our overly stimulated world, phrases become throw-away until you take the time to experience them in a repetitive manner.
Finally, the last piece was “For beginners (instructed piano)” installed in the trend-of-the-moment, oversized elevator. From the gallery:
A sound installation within a room. To record the sound for this piece, a pianist listened to Nauman’s verbal instructions for all the possible combinations of the four fingers and the thumb, and moved his fingers on a piano keyboard in response. The instructions were played to the pianist via headphones, and the pianist played the instructions while keeping both of his hands in the same place at middle c of the piano keyboard. The sound was recorded in six tracks, which Nauman then stacked and mixed into a twenty minute loop.
I didn’t know this going in, but the piece did appear very child-like. It sounded like you were listening to a piano lesson. Sadly, there was a very unpleasant guard in the elevator who made the experience unpleasant for me. Again, another time when curating harms the viewer's experience of the work.
I am not sure if Nauman intended the work to have this common simplistic element to it. An element that made the works seem child-like. The gallery had very little info and the press release is the most basic one I’ve ever seen. Obviously, Bruce Nauman is a superstar artist with a devoting fan base (my self included) but I would have loved more info on his inspiration and ideas about the work. The other recent works I’ve seen have also been sound installations – Days and Giorni at the Venice Biennale. And the one part that has stayed with me from Days was the one child’s voice who stood out from all the others. Starting to see some connections…
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