Bruce Conner:

Search And Destroy

Bruce Conner: Search and Destroy was a two-part exhibition that debuted a portfolio of punk rock photos from 1977 by legendary artist Bruce Conner alongside a group exhibition that explored punk rock's historical and ongoing relationship to visual art. The exhibition featured a selection of works by Conner from different stages of his career as well as videos of punk rock and related performance art, an installation of flyers from the Goteblud archive, documentation of primal scream therapy, and artwork by Rodney Graham, Martin Kersels and Miranda July and others. The exhibition coincided with a panel at the annual meeting of the College Art Association in Los Angeles in February 2012. The panel brought together scholars and artists to explore the themes addressed in the exhibition.

Bruce Conner was one of the foremost American artists of the postwar era. Emerging from the California art scene, in which he worked for half a century, Conner’s work touches on various themes of postwar American society, from a rising consumer culture to the dread of nuclear apocalypse. Working simultaneously in a range of mediums, Conner created hybrids of painting and sculpture, film and performance, drawing and printing, including bodies of works on paper utilizing drawing and collage and two important photographic bodies of work, including a haunting group of black-and-white life-sized photograms called Angels. Equally a pioneer of avant-garde filmmaking, Conner developed a quick-cut method of editing that defined his oeuvre. Incorporating footage from a variety of sources—countdown leaders, training films, and newsreels—and adding later his own 16mm film footage, Conner’s films also focus on disturbing but utterly current themes.

Bruce Conner was born in 1933 in McPherson, Kansas and died in 2008 in San Francisco, California. He received his BFA from Nebraska University before studying at the Brooklyn Museum Art School and the University of Colorado. His works can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.