Bruce Nauman (1941 -) is arguably the most influential artist at work in the world today. His pioneering explorations of sculpture, performance, film, video, neon and sound art have seen him investigating areas of art practice years before his peers, providing inspiration for innumerable artistic careers. Nauman has always drawn on a wide range sources for his own work, including the philosophy of Wittgenstein, the music and writings of John Cage, Gestalt Therapy, and literary sources including Alain Robbe-Grillet, Elias Cannetti and Samuel Beckett. He has collaborated with a wide range of film-makers, musicians, dancers and artists including Jasper Johns, Richard Serra, Meredith Monk, Terry Allen and Merce Cunningham. In 1989 he married the artist Susan Rothernberg and moved his home and studio to a ranch in New Mexico, where he indulges an increasingly intense interest in training horses. He has exhibited internationally since the mid 1960s. Nauman will be the fifth artist to accept the challenge of taking on the cavernous space of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall in Autumn 2004, following on from Olafur Eliasson's mesmerising The Weather Project that utilised mist and an artificial su

Author Biography

Emma Dexter is a Tate curator. She is the editor of Luc Tuymans and co-editor of Cruel and Tender: The Real in the Twentieth-Century Photograph.