In his first exhibition organized by a Texas museum, Bruce Nauman presents recent sculptures and drawings depicting animal forms that build upon his long-term investigation of his own role as an artist and his daily practice in the studio.

For over six decades, Bruce Nauman has worked in a stunning range of media, from video, film, and sound, to neon, wax, and performance. His earliest works took his own body as subject matter, resulting in body casts and repetitive actions recorded on video. He has produced monumental sculptures using commonly found building materials, videos that explore violence, aggression, and comedy, neons that display philosophical aphorisms and sexual gestures, and disturbing and meditative sound installations. Nauman’s inventive attitude toward art making has deeply influenced generations of artists and he is widely considered to be one of the most important artists of our time.

Identical features a group of polyurethane, silicone rubber, and plaster-cast animal forms fabricated from elements the artist had in his New Mexico studio, as well as a selection of related silverpoint and goldpoint still life drawings—a group of works that was produced in the artist’s New Mexico studio from 2023 to 2026. The exhbition takes on the trope of memento morithrough its intimate ties to creation, death, and remembrance, given the role of taxidermy forms as a way to enliven something that has perished and transform living nature into still life.