Perfect Door/Perfect Odor/Perfect Rodo 1972

Bruce Nauman, who has always been a playful instigator, created these neon word sculptures, "Perfect Door/Perfect Odor/Perfect Rodo", but when? Well, that question remains open to interpretation, doesn’t it? There’s something kind of funny and awkward about these glowing pronouncements, these declarations of perfection. A door? An odor? Rodo—whatever that is? Are these even real things? Nauman's got me thinking here about how we're constantly chasing these ideals of perfection. Is that the American Dream, or just a plain old nightmare? I imagine him in his studio thinking about how he can make us stop and question these notions of perfection and truth, in an absurd way. The wires hanging down seem so vulnerable. The imperfect wires, the imperfect neon, make it all strangely human. We are all flawed and messy, after all. It's a kind of anti-monument to the ways that language both fails and illuminates. It's in that space of uncertainty that things get really interesting.