Studies for Holograms (e) 1970

Bruce Nauman made this print, ‘Studies for Holograms (e)’, sometime in the 1970s. It's an image of a mouth being stretched wide, maybe a bit grotesque, but definitely intriguing. I love how Nauman uses this sickly yellow-green tone; it feels both artificial and organic, like something found under a microscope. The texture is pretty cool too, a kind of granular effect, almost like it's been blown up from a small photograph. It makes you think about the body as something weird and alien. Take a look at the teeth. The way they are rendered, uneven and slightly out of focus, gives the image a raw, almost aggressive quality. It’s like Nauman is forcing us to confront something unpleasant, something hidden beneath the surface. It reminds me a bit of some of Francis Bacon’s distorted portraits, that same sense of unease and distortion. Ultimately, it's this play with perception, this push and pull between attraction and repulsion, that makes Nauman’s work so compelling.