NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Schaulager, Basel, announce their collaboration on a full retrospective devoted to the work of American artist Bruce Nauman (b. 1941). Opening at Schaulager in March 2018 and traveling to The Museum of Modern Art in September of that year, the exhibition will be the first comprehensive retrospective of the artist's work across all mediums in over 20 years, and will build upon the rich holdings of the two organizing institutions. Covering his entire career, from the earliest fully realized sculptures of 1965 to his most recent work, the exhibition will provide an opportunity to experience Nauman’s command of a wide range of mediums, from drawing, printmaking, photography, and neon, to performance, video, film, sculpture, and large-scale installations—including Days (2009), a 14-channel sound installation for which Nauman won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation at the Venice Biennial in 2009. The exhibition is organized by Kathy Halbreich, Associate Director, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, with Heidi Naef, Senior Curator, Schaulager, and Magnus Schaefer, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Bruce Nauman is widely acknowledged as a central figure in contemporary art and one of the most influential artists of his time. Throughout his career, Nauman has continuously explored how ways of understanding ourselves in the world are structured by our phenomenological and psychological experience of time, space, sound, movement, and architecture, as well as by power relations and language. Repetition and permutation, the sudden flashes (or breakdowns) of meaning in wordplays and rebus-like objects, and fundamental philosophical and ethical questions hidden in plain sight behind brash dichotomies (good/bad, life/death) are key to his approach.

Few can match Nauman's wide-ranging intellect, deadpan wit, or formal invention. The artist strips away extraneous ideas and materials until he finds the most pointed but modest way to express his themes. While his work is never overtly political, a persistent sense of urgency pervades, with the artist insisting the viewer "pay attention," an admonition that appears in reverse on one of his prints. Nauman has said his real interest is in "investigating the possibilities of what art may be" rather than in making objects. For well over 40 years he has invigorated his work by questioning the philosophical underpinnings that define and give shape to it. At a time when young artists routinely cross disciplinary boundaries and performance has found a central place in museums, it remains difficult to single out another sculptor who has worked for so long and so persuasively in so many mediums.

A major publication will accompany the exhibition.