Tacita Dean and Bruce Nauman’s “Drawing Blind Drawing” in Paris: Two Pairs of Hands, Eyes Closed

Close your eyes and draw a hand. What comes out is not what you see but what you remember — and how much your own hand trusts itself. That simple exercise, familiar to every art student, is the engine of Tacita Dean and Bruce Nauman at Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris, where the two artists present their first joint work, Drawing Blind Drawing (2026), from 19 October to 19 December 2026.

An unlikely pairing that makes perfect sense

On paper, the collaboration crosses generations and temperaments. Bruce Nauman, born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1941 and living in New Mexico, is one of the most influential American artists of the past sixty years, with more than 250 solo exhibitions, the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at Venice in 1999, and the US Pavilion at the 2009 Biennale, which itself won the Golden Lion. Tacita Dean, born in Canterbury in 1965 and working between Berlin and Los Angeles, is the foremost champion of photochemical film among contemporary artists, as well as a draughtswoman and printmaker; her honours include the Hugo Boss Prize (2006), the Kurt Schwitters Prize (2009) and, this year, the Queen Sonja Print Award.

The two met in February 2025, and their conversation turned to drawing. That shared ground is less surprising than it seems. Nauman made his name in the late 1960s by filming himself performing simple, repetitive actions in the studio, turning the artist’s body into the material of the work. Dean has spent three decades behind the camera, slowly observing people, places and light. The press release notes the neat reversal at play here: Nauman, who so often used his own body, and Dean, who usually stays out of frame, now share the image equally.

How the film was made

Filming took place at Nauman’s home in New Mexico in November 2025 and January 2026, with no fixed idea of the final form. The films show nothing but hands: the two artists drawing side by side in a single frame. To share that frame, Dean used two torn masks — a technique inspired by Abel Gance’s silent epic Napoléon (1927), famous for its split and multiple screens. The masks themselves derive from a photocopy collage by Nauman, which hangs in the gallery as a kind of key to the work.

The two films differ in their grounds. One sheet is coated in blackboard paint, the other in white acrylic prepared for silverpoint. The drawing tools are gold- and silverpoint, among the oldest and least forgiving techniques in Western drawing: a metal stylus that leaves a fine, permanent line and cannot be erased. In each pairing, one artist draws blind, from memory, while the sighted partner guides — sometimes with one hand, sometimes with two.

The still life on the table

The objects being drawn are themselves hands. Dean brought from Berlin a plaster cast of Goethe’s hand; Nauman contributed a cast-bronze hand of his own whose thumb and fingers form a heart. So the film shows living hands drawing sculpted hands, guided by other living hands — a loop of touch, memory and representation. Nauman’s one-line summary of the method, quoted in the release, is disarming: “You can’t go wrong when you are drawing with your eyes closed.”

What you will see in the gallery

On the ground floor, Drawing Blind Drawing is shown as a silent 35mm colour diptych of 4 minutes 20 seconds on an endless loop, each projection more than seven metres long — a monumental scale for an act as intimate as drawing. Nauman’s photocopy collage accompanies it. In the basement, selected 16mm films by Dean screen daily at 4pm from 20 October to 14 November. A booklet reproduces a full conversation between Dean and the critic Hal Foster about the work.

The Paris show is one node in a wider constellation. A companion film, Hand On, is on view at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin beside Nauman’s 1984/2010 installation Room with My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care; Dean’s FILM is at the Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles; and Nauman’s Identical is at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.

Paris in Art Basel week

Marian Goodman’s space at 79 rue du Temple sits in the Marais, at the heart of the city’s gallery district. Opening on 19 October, the exhibition lands as Paris fills for Art Basel Paris at the Grand Palais, a week when the city’s galleries stage their most ambitious programmes. Among them, a quiet film of four hands may prove the most memorable.

Why it matters

• For artists and drawing teachers: a masterclass in blind drawing as a discipline of memory and concentration, and in metalpoint as a medium that rewards commitment.
• For collectors and institutions: the first collaboration between two artists of museum stature, made on celluloid at a time when analogue film is increasingly rare.
• For everyone: a reminder that drawing connects mind, gesture and image — and that chance and the “unintended act” can be as eloquent as skill.

Visiting information

Marian Goodman Gallery, 79 rue du Temple, 75003 Paris. 19 October – 19 December 2026; vernissage Monday 19 October, 6–8pm. Open Tuesday–Saturday 10am–6pm. Phone +33 (0)1 48 04 70 52, [email protected]. Read the official exhibition page, see our exhibition listing, and browse Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries for more.