Clown Torture
1987
Performance Art
Installation: two 20-in. colour monitors, two 25-in colour monitors, four speakers, two video projectors, four videotapes (colour, sound)
Lannan Foundation, Los Angeles, California, USA
Video Art had been absent from Nauman’s work between 1973 to 1985, ‘Clown Torture’ is one of his most significant pieces created upon his return to the medium. Installed within an enclosed piece consists of videotapes projected onto two sidewalls and two pairs of stacked monitors on pedestals. The five sequences of a clown playing over each other repeatedly. Featuring some of Nauman’s primary themes of surveillance, interrogation, repetition, and physical stress Clown Torture subjects the viewer to a visual and auditory experience that is both disarming and unbearable.
Bruce Nauman
Post-Minimalism, Process Art, Performance Art
Born: 6 December 1941, Indiana, USA
Nationality: American
Nauman is an artist whose practice spans a broad range of media including photography, sculpture, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Living in New Mexico, Nauman is among the most influential and versatile artists to emerge from the 1960s
About the Jez of It 