Flesh to White to Black to Flesh is a story of changes, splitting and intensifying the artist's body.
First, Bruce Nauman, sitting in a chair, slowly paints his skin white in a sort of archaic, theatrical ritual. This coating distinguishes him from his black shadow projected on the wall. He then paints himself black and thus becomes assimilated to this shadow until he removes and erases all traces of the masks and recovers his original identity. Sculptured body, matter, writing surface: Bruce Nauman plays with his own transformations. The sculptor and his subject - the sculptor is his subject.
Bruce Nauman continues today to cover this question of fragmented identity with masks, using for example the figure of the clown, or in other words the abstract idea of a person rather than the image of the subject himself.

Stéphanie Moisdon