WHILE THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE may be quotidian on the University of New Mexico’s Albuquerque campus, Bruce Nauman’s concrete walk-through sculpture has a little-known cousin, Room With My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care, installed at the Hamburger Bahnhof National Gallery of Contemporary Art, in Berlin. Both works feature long concrete tunnels that intersect at a midpoint where entrants can see in all directions. But in Berlin, those views are just gallery walls. In New Mexico, looking up reveals a square of turquoise sky. “I don’t know if it’s strange in New Mexico,” says Christina Cook, a UNM graduate student studying Nauman’s work. “I think it fits well. I’m not sure how it would land in Connecticut.”
Albuquerque’s Center of the Universe
Bruce Nauman's concrete sculpture gives visitors to UNM's campus a new way to look at the Albuquerque Sky.
Galisteo’s Bruce Nauman created the Center of the Universe conceptual art installation. Photograph by Steven St. John.