Out of Line: Art at the Edge
Out of Line Art at the Edge Bruce NaumanBruce Nauman, Dance or Exercise on the Perimeter of a Square (Square Dance), 1967–68. Black-and-white video with sound, transferred from 16 mm film, 8:24 min. Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York. © 2026 Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
What happens when the artist’s studio spills out into the world? And when the world necessarily makes its way into the studio? In the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, as political and cultural upheavals reverberated across the country, artists at UC Davis navigated these questions.
Bruce Nauman (M. A. ’66) taped a square on the ground of his studio and filmed himself walking around the perimeter during the winter of 1967–68.
This exhibition takes his square as a formal provocation to investigate the boundaries of the artist studio, specifically drawing on Nauman’s deployment of the perimeter as a site of activity. Mike Henderson, Ester Hernandez, Malaquías Montoya, Bruce Nauman, Nancy Rubins, Dorothy Wiley and the student artists of UC Davis’ Third World Forum engage with film, print and performance—cheap, accessible mediums that allowed for experimentation, iteration and easy dissemination. Through these frameworks, Out of Line challenges the arbitrary line that declares certain practices “artistic” and others “political.” Curated by Ginny Duncan, assistant curator, and Grace Xiao, curatorial assistant.
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