Bruce Nauman's Controversial Dallas Sculpture Re-Examined

(MENAFN- USA Art News) A new exhibition at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas is shedding light on a forgotten moment in the city's art history: the divisive 1980 debut of a Bruce Nauman sculpture. The show,“Bruce Nauman: Identical,” marks the first Nauman exhibition organized by a Texas museum and stems from curator Leigh Arnold's discovery of the artwork's original installation.

In the fall of 1980, Nauman's piece, titled Smoke Rings: Two Concentric Circles Skewed, Non-Communicating, was placed on the lawn of the Hockaday School, an elite girls' prep school in Dallas. Brought to the city by young gallerist Carol Taylor for the inaugural exhibition at her new space, the artwork received a largely negative public reception, despite a photograph of Nauman with his work appearing in the school's yearbook. Arnold noted that this sculpture offers a crucial insight into Nauman's practice and provides a valuable piece of Dallas's cultural narrative.

Nauman initiated his“Smoke Rings” series in 1977 to explore tunnels as sculptural forms. Arnold explained that the 1980 sculpture's two interlocking circles were“arranged obliquely so you can see the interior of the circle, as well as the exterior, at the same time.” She added that this design reflects a theme the artist has explored for decades:“It's this thing he's been exploring for decades, a through line in his practice. What's interior, what's exterior, what are we presenting to the world, versus what are we holding in ourselves?”

Taylor, a 78-year-old former Dallas debutante and Hockaday alumna, returned to her hometown in 1974 after working at New York's influential Parasol Press throughout the 1960s, where she produced print editions for artists like Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, and Robert Ryman. She encountered a Nauman print during a trip to Santa Fe.“I thought, 'what is this?'” Taylor recalled in a video call. After closer examination, she said,“it just clicked.”

Nauman's work resonated with Taylor, and in 1980, when she decided to open her own gallery, Leo Castelli's New York gallery approved her request to bring some of Nauman's art to Dallas for her first show that December. At that time, Nauman had already established himself in conceptual American art, having had exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and New York's Whitney Museum in 1972. He had also proposed the monumental Square Depression for the inaugural Skulptur Projekte Münster in 1977, which was deemed too extreme and remained unrealized for 30 years.

Taylor described Nauman as polite, quiet, and possessing a wry sense of humor, despite his radical reputation. When Nauman expressed a desire to install a public outdoor work for her exhibition, Taylor arranged for it to be placed on her alma mater's expansive lawn. The sculpture, Smoke Rings: Two Concentric Tunnels Skewed, Non-Communicating, consisted of two 15-foot cast-aluminum circles, quartered into sections with small gaps and finished in a black satin patina. The 21-inch-high artwork was elevated slightly above the grass by shims. Each circle was constructed from V-shaped sections with open sides, positioned obliquely, preventing passage from one“tunnel” to the other.

The work remained on view for six weeks, and the community largely disliked it.“People were horrified,” Taylor stated, noting that despite the initial negative reception, she mounted another Nauman exhibition in 1983, though those sculptures were kept indoors at her gallery. Arnold observed that while early reactions to Nauman's work often described it as“bleak, sometimes bewildering,” its beauty lies in its clear revelation of sculptural mechanisms, making the creative process evident to all. The artist's decision to present the large-scale, three-dimensional version of his“Smoke Rings” drawing on a Dallas lawn, alongside drawings in Taylor's gallery, emphasized what Arnold called his long-standing interest in the“tangibility of space versus the intangibility of virtual space.”

Though Taylor's 1980 show was not publicly acclaimed, Nasher director Carlos Basualdo and Arnold recognized an opportunity to reintroduce Nauman to Texas audiences.“Bruce Nauman: Identical” reimagines“Begin Again,” the artist's 2024 exhibition at Sperone Westwater in New York. Basualdo, who curated Nauman's U.S. Pavilion presentation at the 2009 Venice Biennale, saw the New York show firsthand. After joining the Nasher in 2025, he and Arnold identified an open slot in the schedule as an ideal chance to bring the artist's work back to Dallas.

The“Identical” exhibition includes suspended sculptures of coyotes and foxes made from polyurethane, silicone rubber, and plaster-cast taxidermy molds, similar to those featured in“Begin Again.” These sculptures are presented alongside silverpoint and goldpoint drawings of the molds, which are standard forms used by taxidermists to create lifelike animal sculptures. Arnold explained that through this pairing, Nauman once again reveals an object's interior while viewers observe its exterior. Regarding the exhibition title, Arnold said Nauman highlighted the importance of imperfection in sculpture.“The hope and desire of sculptural casting is to create an identical version in a different medium, but that's impossible,” she noted.“It's a tongue-in-cheek way of pointing out to all of us that in this process, nothing's going to be identical. Nothing's ever going to be perfect.”

“Bruce Nauman: Identical” is on view at the Nasher Sculpture Center on Flora Street in Dallas through March 21, 2027.

Source: Artnet News

MENAFN06102026005694012507ID1111771613