FILE PHOTOS of the Art Gallery of Ontario, taken Sept 21 2012. (Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail)Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
The Art Gallery of Ontario is digging into the riches of its permanent collections to present an exhibition of works on paper and film by the legendary U.S. multimedia conceptualist Bruce Nauman.
The show, opening March 1, will feature about 24 of Nauman's "word images," the first such presentation of his prints at the AGO in 20 years. Mounted by AGO modern and contemporary art curator Kitty Scott, the works date from 1970 to 1988, supplemented by a 1985 Nauman video installation Good Boy Bad Boy and a 1984 neon sculpture, Double Poke in the Eye II, lent by AGO trustee/collector David Campbell and his wife Vivian. Indeed, all of the works in Bruce Nauman's Words on Paper are gifts from the Campbells.
"Language is one of Nauman's most important subjects, studied in many different ways," said Scott in a media release Wednesday. Nauman's word images "often feature puns and oxymorons, linking contradictory words in alliterative strings." In one work in the show, Violins/Violence (1985), the artist "creates a pun that is verbal, visual and arual, playing these homonyms against each other and the imagined scratches made by his etching pen." Also included in the show, which concludes May 4, are Studies for Holograms, a portfolio of five screenprints, TV Clown, a lithograph on Transpagra polyester film and Use Me, an etching on wove paper.
The Indiana-born Nauman, 72, represented the U.S. at the 2009 Venice Biennale. His work is in permanent collections around the world including the Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Modern and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Editor's note: Kitty Scott is a modern and contemporary art curator, not creator. And all of the works in Bruce Nauman's Words on Paper are gifts from the Campbells. This version of the article has been corrected.