Composed of ten bronze hands adjoined in a daisy chain of soldered wrists and interlocking fingers, Bruce Nauman’s ‘Untitled (Hand Circle)’ (1996) reflects his decades-long exploration of language, space and the body. While recalling the intimate corporeality of seminal works such as ‘From Hand to Mouth’ (1967), here Nauman refers to ‘kids’ sign language,’ a simplistic yet provocative hand signal that appears in his earlier neon work ‘Human Sexual Experience’ (1985) and his ‘Fingers and Holes’ series (1994). [1]
‘I’ve always had overlapping ways of going about my work.’
—Bruce Nauman [2]
In creating this turnabout of lewd gesturing, the artist cleverly evokes genesis and progeny, a metaphor reinforced through the process of casting. Notably exhibited in the United States pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennale, ‘Untitled (Hand Circle)’ was included in Nauman’s survey, ‘Topographical Gardens,’ which won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. Other examples of this sculpture are held in important public collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Tate, London, and the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne.
‘What I tend to do is see something, then remake it and remake it and remake it and try every possible way of remaking it. If I’m persistent enough, I get back to where I started.’
—Bruce Nauman [3]
About the artist
Born in 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Bruce Nauman is widely regarded as one of the most important and innovative American artists of his generation, pioneering the development of post-minimalism. Since the late 1960s, Nauman’s conceptual practice has proliferated in a wide-ranging investigation that encompasses drawing, sculpture, installation, performance and video, forming an open-ended creative volution in response to the human condition. Nauman’s lauded oeuvre has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including his recent survey, which opened at Tate, London, in 2020, travelling to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2021), M Woods, Beijing (2022), and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2022-23).
Artwork images © Bruce Nauman / 2023, ProLitteris, Zurich. Photo: Thomas Barratt
[1] Bruce Nauman quoted in ‘The Serial Impulse. Bruce Nauman, Fingers and Holes, 1994,’ National Gallery of Art, accessed 28 August 2020, https://www.nga.gov/features/the-serial-impulse/bruce-nauman.html
[2] Bruce Nauman quoted in Arts Magazine 44:5 (March 1970), reprinted in Janet Kraynak, ed., ‘Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman’s Words. Writing and Interviews’ (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 2003), p. 119.
[3] Bruce Nauman quoted in Joan Simon, ‘Breaking the Silence: An Interview with Bruce Nauman’ Art in America, September 1, 1988, https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/breaking-silence-interview-bruce-nauman-63570/
