'Elusive Signs: Bruce Nauman Works With Light' at Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

SAN DIEGO -- "The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths." So wrote Bruce Nauman in a colorful neon spiral in 1967. Pretty wry, to make such a romantic sentiment gleam like a beer ad. But Nauman's self-reflexive, subversive definition of his own enterprise makes perfect sense in the shape of a spiral -- dynamic, continuous and conspicuously lacking closure.

By Leah Ollman

June 10, 2008