Bruce Conner: It’s All True, a bracing survey of the multimedia artist’s work, is up through Jan. 22, 2017 at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, after its first iteration at MoMA NY closed in October. The exhibition travels to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain, where it will run from Feb. 21-May 22, 2017.
The subtitle of the exhibition comes from a letter that Conner fs ’55 (1933-2008) wrote to a friend, in 2000, listing many of the ways his art has been characterized in the media: “My work is described as beautiful, horrible, hogwash, genius, maundering, precise, quaint, avant-garde, historical, hackneyed, masterful, trivial, intense, mystical, virtuosic, bewildering, absorbing, concise, absurd, amusing, innovative, nostalgic, contemporary, iconoclastic, sophisticated, trash, masterpieces, etc. It’s all true.”
Another of Conner’s friends, the poet, playwright, novelist and documentary filmmaker Michael McClure fs ’53, once called his longtime friend’s creations “healthy, creepy, dark, sweet, laughing works of art.” The exhibition at SFMoMA is the most comprehensive view of Conner’s multifarious work to date, and includes more than 300 works from all media. The exhibition catalogue, available for purchase online, is edited by Rudolf Frieling and Gary Garrels, with essays and contributions by many art world scholars and luminaries, including McClure.
