Museo Picasso Málaga presents Bruce Nauman. Rooms, Bodies, Words, an exhibition on an artist whose innovative work centers on his understanding of art as an activity or process, rather than as the production of objects. 

With abundant references to music, dance, literature and philosophy, Bruce Nauman’s work generates in viewers the kind of responses that are associated with provocation, conflict, tension, disorientation, and anxiety, via a relentless repetition of language and form.

With a selection of corridors, neons, sculptures, video and sound works, architectural installations, performances and works on paper, the exhibition at Museo Picasso Málaga aims to illustrate the thinking and ethical views of Bruce Nauman. His irony and incisiveness are apparent in his plays-on-words and in the relationships that are established between viewer, space and artwork. Jointly curated by Prof. Eugen Blume, from Germany, and the artistic director of Museo Picasso Málaga, José Lebrero Stals, this is the first large-format exhibition of Nauman’s work in Spain for 25 years.

This Museo Picasso Málaga exhibition will be moving away from the space normally used for temporary exhibitions, with a dozen of Bruce Nauman’s works distributed around other architectural spaces in the gallery.  In its “Patio de Columnas” courtyard, visitors will be able to see the sculpture Smoke rings: 2 Concentric Tunnels Skewed, Non Communicating (1980); the archaeological site will house the video installation Clown Torture (1987), and the in the inner courtyard visitors themselves will be able to be part Body Pressure (1974), in which students form the Pepa Flores professional dance conservatory will encourage interaction with the audience, Monday to Saturday, from 12 noon until 12.30h. Other works, featuring installations and videos by Nauman, have been placed in different areas of the museum.

This Museo Picasso Málaga exhibition has benefitted from advice and support from the principal galleries that have represented the artist: Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York, and Konrad Fischer Galerie, Düsseldorf. It highlights the artist’s links with Europe in a project that contains pieces held mainly in European private and public collections. Prominent among these, due the number of works on loan, is the support received from the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, Berlin, and Spanish collections such as the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo de la Junta de Andalucía; Colección "la Caixa". Arte contemporáneo; Colección Bergé; Colección MACBA and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. European museums include Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo; Liebelt Collection, Hamburg; Museu Coleçao Berardo, Lisbon; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, and Tate London.  Museums in the U.S. include The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and The Sonnabend Collection Foundation, New York, amongst other cultural organizations, as well as numerous private collections. Organized in collaboration with La Caixa Foundation.