Bruce Nauman and Frank Owen
Pursuit features work by four artists who in the 1960s and 70s shared a commitment to a life-as-art approach and a refusal to conform to an institutional theory of art. Their art highlighted the process of their conceptual and formal practices and a rigorous self-reflexive exploration of art’s pursuit(s). Stephen J. Kaltenbach, Lee Lozano, Bruce Nauman and Frank Owen shared ideas, sometimes exhibited together, and occasionally collaborated while in New York City. Within a decade of arriving to the city in the 1960s each of them reached critical acclaim and independently separated themselves from the New York City art scene, relocating to rural areas of the country for the solitude they sought to focus on their art; Kaltenbach from Battle Creek, Michigan, to the California Valley via New York City; Lozano from Newark, New Jersey to Texas via Chicago and New York City; Owen from Kalispell, Montana to the Adirondacks via the California Valley and New York City, and Nauman from Fort Wayne, Indiana to settle in rural New Mexico via Northern California and New York City. While embedded in the New York City art scene, Owens, Nauman, Kaltenbach and Lozano kept in their sights on questions of art’s purpose. Their dialogue and individual creative outputs have inspired many artists to continue the same questioning.
Pursuit (Truth), 1975. Film canister label
Stills from Pursuit (Truth), 1975.
Pursuit takes its cue from a 16mm film titled Pursuit (Truth) (1975) that Frank Owen and Bruce Nauman made together and conceived during a hike in the Adirondacks. They were wandering to no place in particular and decided to rest at Chapel Pond to skip stones when one said to the other about their hike, “Wouldn’t it be funny if we ran or walked on a treadmill and filmed it?” The film appears to show running subjects in some pursuit, running toward something, in some direction viewed head-on and from either side as the camera view shifts. The relentless imagery acts as a metaphor for the endless—and often fruitless—pursuit of meaning or truth in art. The runners stay in one place from our point of view and in reality, despite the illusion that they are moving. Process and labor in art’s pursuits is often addressed in the work of these four artists. Frank Owen has made a part of his practice, overwhelming both his own working limits and the visual capacity of the viewer to frame artmaking as an endless cycle of physical labor. Owen’s work also employs an analytical approach where spontaneity and strict structure are inseparable. This is a break from other abstract expressionist painters who adopted direct and emotionally raw mark-making on canvas. Owen is a process artist who often speaks about getting lost in process and giving into it. Bruce Nauman, makes work about the absurdity of repetitive, frustrating and sometimes pointless labor for example films of himself pacing around the studio, repeating phrases among other repeated actions (Violin Film # 1 (Playing The Violin As Fast As I Can), 1967-68). Similarly, Lee Lozano engaged in drawings, paintings and performance artworks that integrated ideas of labor and process, treating her work not merely as a means of production, but as a conceptual strategy and a way of living. Themes of her work include gender critique, capitalism, systemic control and power. Some of her formal and conceptual exercises were collaborations with Stephen Kaltenbach with whom Lee often worked. In her journaling art work (Private Books), Lee mentions her discussions with Frank, Bruce and Steve as significant to an ongoing dialogue about art and its pursuit(s).
In response to dominant trends that emphasized subjective self-reflection influenced by post-war anxiety and existentialism, formal art and idea-based art of the late 1960’s considered objective removal to explore the way artists and art audiences thought about art’s potential. During this period Kaltenbach, Lozano, Nauman and Owen were committed to art’s expansion asking questions and challenging assumptions. This decade was a pivotal one for art cultivating serious, fun and thought-provoking developments. It was a time in which these artists were influential and made an impact. Ironically, retreating from the so-called art world was for each of them a pathway to focus on art.
This exhibition includes artwork created prior, during, and after their time in New York City. The work Kaltenbach, Lozano, Nauman and Owen made during this period engages the chaos of life at the epicenter of the artworld with questions about identity, purpose, ego, esthetics among other subjects concerned with foundations of art. Ultimately this period is best understood as a piece of the broader context of their itinerant careers. They intentionally separated themselves from dominant trends, the art market, art expertise and the expectations of success by removing themselves from an artworld center in favor of space to explore deeper considerations of art. Some would say this is a kind of “dropping out” but these artists and art historians who have considered their commitment to art would disagree. When Frank Owen moved from New York city to the Adirondacks he was escaping the distractions, high costs, and time-consuming social obligations of the New York City’s art scene. In this freer space, his studio practice, specifically methods of abstraction and the boundary of a non-representational "field" expanded. Owen pioneered new methods of abstraction while integrating nature with his work not as subject matter purely but as something of a participant he likes to say. “Here I can wander and allow that valuable space of ‘brain drift’”.
While living in New York City, Kaltenbach visited Owen in the Adirondacks. Within a decade he also withdrew from the mainstream New York City art world at the height of his early success in the late 1960s with a durational art action called “Kill My Career”. This art project was initiated within the framework of a larger project he called "Protocol of Opposites", a conceptual art strategy he developed to identify "accepted" behaviors and expected career trajectories of artists in the New York City art world. This was a deliberate act in pursuit of the opposite, against expectations, in his own words “away from the mainstream New York art world's trajectory in favor of working from the margins.” This contrarian approach challenging traditional artistic practices, gallery reliance, the promotion of an artistic ego, and the expected path toward success was something of a disappearing act to become a “regional artist” in rural California. Kaltenbach continued to visit his friend Frank Owen the Adirondacks.
Lee Lozano, a friend to these artists and a close collaborator of Kaltenbach’s in particular, also withdrew in a manner similar to Kaltenbach’s “Protocol of Opposites”. Her self-imposed removal was a committed art action called “Drop out piece”. Lozano left the New York City art scene, closed her SoHo studio around 1971–1972, and relocated to her parents home in Texas. This Radical refusal and self-erasure was considered her final conceptual artwork not unlike Duchamp’s decision to abandon art for chess who like Lozano and Kaltenbach also occasionally made art under a pseudonym. Lozano continued to create strictly private, conceptual art by turning her own life, habits, and isolation into art, “renouncing the artist’s ego . . . to receive cosmic info.” (this text is from an untitled text artwork Lozano initiated in 1971).
In the late 1970’s Bruce Nauman, also left New York City to relocate to New Mexico where he could escape the pressures of the city to work on a ranch, raise horses and make art. Like Kaltenbach, He limited his public visibility to de-emphasize his own ego and embrace "disappearing acts" in his work with themes of self withdrawal, elusiveness, absence, creating or filling voids, sensory deprivation, removing the body or displacing it, and using similar strategies with language to explore meaning. Like Kaltenbach, Nauman also made subsequent visits to the Adirondacks and both have acknowledged having conceived of significant art ideas on these retreats. After removing themselves from New York City in favor of rural areas of the country, all four artists continued their exploration in ways that focused attention on their ideas and their process, intentionally rejecting aspects of “the art world” to make space for art’s expansion.
The themes of the works in this exhibition include self-reflectivity, play, exploration of the mind’s engagement with art, it’s formal and conceptual processes, human purpose/creative purpose, new trajectories of artistic expression and "life-as-art".
Art Works (Sidewalk Plaque), 1968
by Stephen Kaltenbach
Cast bronze. 5 x 8 inches.
Art Works, 1968 is an important work of early Conceptual Art that challenged conventional ideas of authorship, commodification, and the tangible art object particularly in the west coast spirit of Conceptual Art. It was designed to be an anonymous work installed on public sidewalks so that unexpected audiences would wonder what it signifies. The phrase functions as a double entendre, both as a verb that asserts that art has a purpose in society and as a noun that describes the products of creative labor. The artists of this exhibition frequently spoke with one another about language and often integrated puns or word play in some aspects of their titles, texts and occasionally in the work itself. In the same year this work was conceived and designed for anonymous display on public sidewalks, the phrase appeared anonymously in the following magazine advertisements.
Stone Maple, 1971 - 1972
by Stephen Kaltenbach
Acrylic on Canvas. 30 x 34.5 inches.
In the 1970's, Stephen Kaltenbach's returned to painting after leaving New York to "destroy his career" in order to become a "regional artist". During this period he continued to explore conceptual art but also let his process deepen formally with work like Stone Maple 1971-1972 and Portrait of my Father, 1972-1979 which art curator Jordan Stein describes as “driven by spiritual and pharmacological awakening, love for his father, and commitment to seclusion and process." The painting is reminiscent of a graphite on paper drawing by Kaltenbach titled Will ‘O’ the Wisp, 1969-1970 inspired by Kaltenbach’s visit to Frank Owen in the Adirondacks. In his own words, “This work came to me in 1968 when visiting my friend, Frank Owen’s country place in upstate New York. We were hiking at dusk and in the twilight this piece just took form in my mind. That spontaneous appearance of a concept is always amazing although sometimes afterwards I have a realization of where it had come from. Usually it’s a logical progression from the line of work I have been doing. Sometimes, however, I can see the sources of influence coming from another artist’s work, which admittedly is less amazing and satisfying - that’s just human nature. None-the-less, the vectors of incoming ideas are fascinating in and of themselves.” (this text from Stephen Kaltenbach Annotations, 2009)
8" x 10", Black & White Photograph by Alan Kikuchi
Balloon Fooey, 1969.
By Stephen Kaltenbach
Balloons.
Stephen Kaltenbach: “In 1969 came Balloon Fooey. It was an exercise I devised for artists. All that was required was a large studio and a supply of balloons. And, I should add, a high threshold of embarrassment. It is a pseudo martial art in which you kick balloons around trying to keep them up in the air. I liked that I didn’t have to go to the gym. Doing that over the years, I kept quite fit.” According to Kaltenbach, this “martial art served as a way to combine fitness with a performance-based art practice”. A 2015, exhibition of Kaltenbach’s art titled BAD IDEAS included "Balloon Fooey" alongside other art works which often involved unconventional, ephemeral, or "secret" works.”
Thought Firewood, early 1990’s
by Frank Owen
Firewood, acrylic. Dimensions variable.
This sculpture by Owen integrates his "painting in verso" techniques to create “sculptural bark” for pieces of naked fire wood. In ”Funk Art” and Arte Povera fashion, the sculpture uses everyday, unconventional materials like fire wood, to reject traditional commercial art values and bridge the gap between art and daily life. The sculptural bark surface collages the shapes of found objects with images of artists who Owen considers significant in a legacy of revolutionary artists and thinkers including Marcel Duchamp, Funk Artist and friend, Robert Arneson and architect, philosopher, and futurist Buckminster Fuller among others.
Violin Film # 1 (Playing The Violin As Fast As I Can), 1967-68
by Bruce Nauman
16mm film transferred to video (black and white, sound)
This film is a seminal short film of the conceptual art movement, breaking from traditional artistic mediums to use the artist’s own body, and actions as the primary material. The film was made at a time when artists like Nauman were abandoning the primacy of formalism, integrating performance and experiential art. The exploration of this approach and art as an activity to be investigated typically involved a paring down of the process and self-reflexivity in this case with the assumption that whatever the artist is doing in the studio must be art.
TIME (9), 1969
by Lee Lozano as conserved by Stephen Kaltenbach String,
washer, nails. 5 x 40 inches.
Time (9) is physically composed of segments of string passing through a shared washer before departing in opposite directions. The washer oscillates measuring time qualitatively through its repeated cycles rather than in quantitative measurement. Evoking prismatic imagery, it calls attention to temporality, proximity, and effect. Especially interesting is the style of accreditation. The piece is credited to Lee Lozano but is notably ‘conserved’ by Steven Kaltenbach raising questions of authorship and the origin of the art idea. Reminiscent of Kaltenbach’s earlier causal art concerning influence, this work encourages the viewer to consider how exactly, from where, and through whom a particular art idea is passed, realized, and made manifest. Art critic Bruce Hanely calls this work a “makeshift clock.”
Private Books, (1 through 11), 1969 - 1970
by Lee Lozano
Private Books are Lee Lozano’s meticulous notes about her paintings and drawings, her horoscopes, reading lists on various subjects including math, politics and science. The notes include puns and word games, art world gossip, a tally of her drug use and notes about conversations with her artists peers including the artists in this exhibition who she had regular contact with in particular Stephen Kaltenbach with whom she had the most contact and often collaborated with. The notebooks include texts about collaborations with Stephen Kaltenbach and their dialogue concerning shared interests in art, artworks they created to challenge each other and artworks that Lozano initiates to challenge her own practice and art-as-life endeavors including Language Pieces, 1968, Grass and No Grass Pieces,1969, Dialogue Piece and General Strike Piece also begun in 1969 and Drop Out Piece in 1970.
Studies for Holograms, 1970
by Bruce Nauman
One from a set of five screenprints in color, all on Kromekote paper. 26 × 26 inches.
Bruce Nauman’s Studies for Holograms (1970) utilizes cutting-edge hologram photography without applying the actual hologram. In this absurdist self-portraiture, Nauma treats the human body as a pliable material in order to subvert traditional portraiture. The self-portrait, like others in the series, uses visceral distortion and discomfort that is meant to provoke a psychological response from the viewer. The artists of this exhibition were all concerned with how their own process could impact their audience and how they could challenge their practice to achieve varying results. This portrait series is informed by Nauman’s studio performances from the late 1960’s as he was exploring arbitrary distortions of his own body and image to evoke emotional reactions the viewer is invited to imagine for themselves.
Reappearance, 1983
by Frank Owen
Acrylic and paper collage on canvas. 78 x 32 inches.
In this self-portrait, the artist represents himself in life size alongside signs and symbols related to his practice and his image. Like Nauman’s portrait, Owen also reimagines himself in absurdist fashion and in a manner that is resistant to self-seriousness, typical of west coast art of this period. Imagery collaged in this self portrait reveals press concerned with the reappearance of “Slant Step”, a famous 1960s Bay Area "funk art” icon and found object of unknown origin. The object is itself a legendary conceptual muse of cultish inspiration that has inspired works by many artists since it was found by Wiliam T. Wiley in a Mill Valley thrift shop in 1965. Wiley gifted it to his student Bruce Nauman and it was later stolen by Richard Serra and finally retrieved by Owen who was the president of the New York Society for the Preservation of the Slant Step from 1967 to 2012.
Anonymous Artforum Ads, 1968-1969
by Stephen Kaltenbach
Kaltenbach’s anonymous advertisements were published monthly between November 1968 and December 1969 and were designed to shift attention away from art as a physical and sale-able object, toward language and the viewer’s mental participation. By purchasing commercial advertising space to publish cryptic, minimalist imperatives rather than promote a gallery or sell artwork, Kaltenbach bypassed the traditional gatekeepers of the art world and inserted his work directly into its dominant, market-driven discourse. In doing so, he simultaneously challenged the authority of art media by subverting its commercial platform while also undermining conventional expectations of artistic authorship and ego through anonymity.
November, 1968, “Art Works” (Artforum Magazine, V6, issue 9)
December, 1968, “JOHNNY APPLESEED” (Artforum Magazine, V6, issue 10)
January, 1969, Wrapped ART (Artforum Magazine, V7, issue 1)
February, 1969, “Tell a lie” (Artforum Magazine, V7, issue 2), (PC has two)
March, 1969, “Start a Rumor” (Artforum Magazine, V7, issue 3)
April, 1969, “Perpetrate a hoax” (Artforum Magazine V7, issue 4)
May, 1969, “Build a reputation” (Artforum Magazine, V7, issue 5)
Summer, 1969, “Become a legend” (Artforum Magazine, V7, issue 6)
September, 1969, “Teach Art” (Artforum Magazine, V7, issue 7)
October, 1969, “Smoke” (Artforum Magazine, V7, issue 8)
November, 1969, “Trip” (Artforum Magazine, V7, issue 9)
December, 1969, “You are me” (Artforum Magazine, V7, issue 10)
Aroma Work for Max’s Kansas City, 1970. Aroma.
By Stephen Kaltanbach and Frank Owen
Aroma [Camphor and Mint scent]
On May 2nd 1970, poet Hannah Wiener curated an art exhibition and happening at Max’s Kansas City called the Saturday Afternoon Show that included John Perreault, Deborah Hay, Frank Owen, Vito Acconci, Stephen Kaltenbach, Ira Joel Haber, Adrian Piper, Marjorie Strider, Scott Burton, Eduardo Costa, Paul Pecter and Hanna Wiener herself. Max’s Kansas City was where prominent and up-and-coming artist’s hung out. As Frank recalls, “People could smoke there and they smoked a lot” One day, as Owen and Kaltenbach were sitting in the front window of Max’s Kansas City, they had an idea for an aromatic artwork. They decided to curate a new smell for the space created with camphor, mint and some other scent. This was sprayed underneath the chairs, “especially in the back where Warhol and his cohorts hung out.” According to Gallerist David Stone the performance event occurred minutes before Stephen Kaltenbach left New York City for good, and just prior to the Kent State shootings.
Untitled, 2024
by Frank Owen
Acrylic on canvas. 22 1/4 x 22 1/4 inches
Frank Owen is recognized as an abstract painter associated with Process Art and Post-Minimalism resistant to abstract expressionist aims and methods. His signature contributions include the development of "painting in verso", an inside-out or reverse-layering technique and collaging acrylic paint fragments into “skins” both of which he developed in the 1970s. These methods integrate the visible surface of the finished painting, with subsequent layers built behind it before the paint film is mounted to canvas. Owen’s practice is process and method oriented and his palette resists the somber tones of traditional Abstract Expressionism. While Frank Owen was never strictly a "Funk artist," his foundational years at the University of California, Davis deeply injected the regional California Funk art sensibility into his DNA. Owen worked alongside pioneers like Robert Arneson and William T. Wiley. While Owen himself does not align his art with the Funk Art movement, he translates the rebellious West Coast mindset into a highly physical, rule-breaking approach to abstract painting.