ARTIST ROOMS: Bruce Nauman @ The Harris Art Gallery & Museum, Preston, until 24 May

In 2008, art dealer Anthony d’Offay gifted his contemporary and post-war collection to Tate and National Galleries of Scotland in the form of the ARTIST ROOMS project. The 50 rooms, each a selection of an individual artist's work, act as mini exhibitions – the emphasis taken off stand-alone ‘star’ artworks towards more concentrated presentations that can be reconfigured to any museum or gallery setting across the UK.

The Northwest has already seen several of the ARTIST ROOMS come and go. Sol LeWitt's colourful painted squiggly rainbow installation kicked off the series in 2009 at Tate Liverpool, which went on to show rooms from Robert Therrien (2011) and Martin Creed (2012). In 2010, Manchester Art Gallery played host to Ron Mueck, and in 2012, The Hepworth, Wakefield, showed Richard Long. Now it is the turn of Bruce Nauman’s room at The Harris Art Gallery & Museum, Preston, and there is less than a month left to visit the American artist’s exhibition of neons, video works and installations.

In work produced between 1970 and 1990, Nauman explores the relationship between the body, communication and wordplay. Changing Light Corridor with Rooms (1971) is the centrepiece of the Harris’s ‘room’. It stems from Nauman’s dreams (or nightmares) of being trapped within an enclosed space – a corridor, just big enough for two people to walk through, is constructed of MDF boards in the gallery. A light switches on and off, in sync and then not. It leaves you feeling vulnerable, unstable and sometimes in complete darkness.

Violins Violence Silence (1981-2) is a constantly changing neon work, forming a triangle of these three words that blink on and off in pastel coloured lights. The work alters the space by its use of light, and the viewer's focus is drawn to one word, only to be replaced with another. Elsewhere is Violent Incident (1986) – a sculptural structure of multiple monitors presenting a more complex narrative, half comedic farce, half complex Beckett-like puzzle. The beginning of the narrative, which has the artificial air of a theatre workshop or play rehearsal, shows a couple dissolving into a cycle of farcical destructive violence. We want it to stop but are humoured by it at the same time, and that’s the thing with Nauman – he wants to play with his viewer, to piss us off and please us, to pleasure us and tease us. This exhibition is recommended viewing, regardless. [Sacha Waldron]