Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, in partnership with send + receive, is pleased to present Stamping in the Studio, an iconic video work by one of the world’s foremost conceptual artists, Bruce Nauman. We will present this on Thursday, October 1^st, coinciding with the launch of send + receive at Plug In ICA. Since the 1960s, Nauman’s interdisciplinary approach has challenged conventions while producing new methodologies for creating art and meaning.

Stamping in the Studio takes up Nauman’s preoccupations with process, repetitive, solitary activity and the use of body as material. Interested in incorporating mundane elements of daily life into his work, Nauman used his behaviour, obsessively pacing around the studio, as the starting point for a series of films and videos made between 1967–9. He recorded himself performing simple, repetitive activities, each responding to a specific ‘problem’ articulated in the work’s title. Physically and mentally demanding, these actions were performed without stopping. Key to these works was the video’s duration, which was determined by the length of standard tape stock at the time.

In Stamping in the Studio, Nauman films himself with an inverted camera placed high on the ceiling as he takes small steps, “stamping” back and forth across his studio floor with the rhythms getting more and more complex as time passes. The reversal creates a field in which the floor falls away and the upside-down artist marches against gravity.

Bruce Nauman was born in 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. His work is represented in public and private collections worldwide. Solo exhibitions include “Bruce Nauman: Inside Out,” Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (1993–94, traveled to Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and Museum of Modern Art, New York, through 1995); “Bruce Nauman: Mapping the Studio I (Fat Chance John Cage),” Dia Center for the Arts, New York (2002); “Mapping the Studio,” Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2002); “Bruce Nauman: Theaters of Experience,” Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2003); “Bruce Nauman: Raw Materials,” Unilever Commission, Tate Modern Turbine Hall (2005); “A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s,” UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA (2007); “Notations/Bruce Nauman: Days and Giorni,” Biennale di Venezia (2009, traveled to Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Museum of Modern Art, New York (through 2010); “Bruce Nauman: Dream Passage,” Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2010); and “Bruce Nauman’s Words on Paper,” Art Gallery of Ontario (2014). His work has been included in the Whitney Biennial (1977, 1985, 1987, 1991, and 1997); and the Venice Biennale (1978, 1980, 1999, 2005, and 2007). Nauman lives and works in Northern New Mexico.