This museum exhibit was one of the most mentally disturbing, yet interesting exhibits I have seen this semester. As I walked through the exhibit, I could feel the art pieces continuously playing with my emotions. From the piece with the various projections of a man with his hands behind his head, walking agonizingly slow, to the room with the screaming clowns, I unexpectedly became more conscious about all the things I didn’t know scared me.

Out of all of Bruce Nauman’s art pieces, the piece that had impacted me the most was his neon pieces, in particular, the “VIOLINS VIOLENCE SILENCE” piece. This piece gave off a psychedelic and apprehensive aura because of all the bright neon colors being used and the juxtaposition of words that contradict the others. For the piece, Nauman simply arranged 2 copies of 3 words into a triangle: violins, violence, and silence. Because of the overlapping of words in the piece, the words were sometimes hard to figure out, such as the overlapping of both copies of “silence”. This problem was solved because the words lit up in a cycle, allowing its viewers to focus on each individual word.

Looking more closely at the words, I realized that all 3 of the words were related to sounds. Although the words violins and violence sound very much alike, they have completely different connotations to them, as one word portrays gentle, soothing sounds, while the other depicts chaos and wild sounds. Similarly, silence and violence share the same suffix yet portray opposing connotations. This juxtaposition of contradictory words reflects upon Nauman’s art style, where his pieces are visually appealing or vibrant, but leave their viewers feeling unsettled and restless. What I find intriguing about his art style is that even though many of his artworks depict these seemingly vibrant and playful colors, the underlying meanings of the pieces juxtapose with that.