ART-REVIEW:Bruce Nauman-Desapearing Acts

“Desapearing Acts”, the long overdue retrospective showcasing the work of Brauce Nauman at Schaulager in Basel, the same period with Liste Art Fair and Art Basel was the hotspot of these days between collectors as well as journalists and all art people. The truth is that Schaulager it quite far from the Art Fairs and our time was limited but finally, with good time management and focus, in our last day in Basel it was the last exhibition we visited and the truth is that we were not particularly excited. That’s because I had seen half of these works at Fondation Cartier (14/3-21/6/15) in an exhibition that was really breathtaking. At first, the two video works that are on projection on the very tall outer walls of the Schaulager, were projected very high, and in scale are not existent and regarding their topics seem unrelated, In contrast in the exhibition at Fondation Cartier in Paris, their scale was the right one, and the subject of the videos was directly related both to the building and the surrounding area. But it was not only what made the exhibition disproportionate, it was mainly the choice of the artist’s earlier works that hadn’t coherence with the newer ones, although the curating of the exhibition in this amazing place was impeccable. Also the last and most important, that I have noticed and I really want to emphasize, is that sometimes in the mature body of work of an artist you see other artists of his generation, the influence not only is obvious but it seems like another artist’s artwork is nested in the retrospective of the other.-Efi Michalarou

Info: Curators: Kathy Halbreich, Heidi Naef, Isabel Friedli, Assistant Curators: Magnus Schaefer and Taylor Walsh, Schaulager, Ruchfeldstrasse 19, Münchenstein, Basel, Duration 17/3-26/8/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 10:00-18:00, Thu 10:00-20:00, www.schaulager.org