Education
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University of Bristol, England: PhD, History of Art
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California Institute of the Arts: Master of Fine Arts Degree (MFA), Critical Studies Writing Program
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California State University, Long Beach: Bachelor of Arts Degree, Comparative Literature
Bio and Affiliation
Chris Doyen is an art historian, critic, and educator, specializing in modern and contemporary visual culture and theory. With interests including sculpture, video art, and semiotics, he earned his PhD in Art History at the University of Bristol, England. Based in California, he obtained an MFA from the Critical Studies Writing Program at CalArts after completing an undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature at California State University Long Beach. His academic writing has appeared in Culture, Theory and Critique, Cogent Arts & Humanities, and Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture. With further interests including painting, performance art, and installation art, he regularly teaches courses on art history and visual culture.
His dissertation Bruce Nauman: Sculpting the Video Image explores the intersection between the two-dimensional video image and three-dimensional sculpture. The dissertation examines how the formal mechanisms of Nauman’s installation videos, such as repetitive looping and dense sound, impede meaning reception by paralyzing viewer perception of time and space. Philosopher Roland Barthes’s theories of the third meaning, punctum, and fifth term, as well as theories by Rosalind Krauss concerning entropy and negative space, are utilized as lenses by which to analyze how Nauman’s two-dimensional video images operate in the manner of three-dimensional sculpture. Conference presentations include “Temporal Distortion through Sensory Manipulation: Bruce Nauman’s Anthro/Socio through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Punctum” (July 2024) at the University of Bristol, funded by The Royal Institute of Philosophy. The recipient of numerous travel and research grants, he is currently developing a monograph on Bruce Nauman’s work.
Awards and Honors
- Research Culture Travel Grant, History of Art Department, University of Bristol, UK, 2024
- Conference and Research Grant, History of Art Department, University of Bristol, UK, 2024
- Norman Levan Research Grant, 2024
- Research Culture Travel Grant, History of Art Department, University of Bristol, UK, 2023
- Conference and Research Grant, History of Art Department, University of Bristol, UK, 2023
- Norman Levan Research Grant, 2020
Professional Accomplishments and Exhibitions:
- Conference Presentation: “Temporal Distortion through Sensory Manipulation: Bruce Nauman’s Anthro/Socio through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Punctum” (July 2024) at the University of Bristol, funded by The Royal Institute of Philosophy.
Publications:
- “Sonic Congealment and Sculptural Entropy in Bruce Nauman’s Anthro/Socio: Expanding the Theories of Rosalind Krauss” in Cogent Arts & Humanities, Routledge/Taylor and Francis, July 2025
- “Attacking Viewers with Sound: Bruce Nauman on View at Tai Kwun Contemporary” in White Hot Magazine of Contemporary Art, New York, July 2024
- “Recontextualising Roland Barthes through Bruce Nauman’s video installations and Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty” in Culture, Theory and Critique, Routledge/Taylor and Francis, Jan. 2024
- “Fight, Flight, or Freeze: Stilling the Moving Image in Bruce Nauman’s Contrapposto Studies, i through vii” in Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, The Netherlands Press, Dec. 2023
- “Matthew Barney’s REPRESSIA (decline) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art” in White Hot Magazine of Contemporary Art, New York, Dec. 2023
- “Art That Leaves a Mark: Bruce Nauman and Roland Barthes” in White Hot Magazine of Contemporary Art, New York, Sept. 2023
- “The Corrosive Effect of Repetition on Temporality and Signification in Works by Samuel Beckett and Bruce Nauman” in Exclamation, academic journal, University of Exeter, July 2022