ART
Mel Bochner |
Written 30 January |
Wednesday 02 June, 11:00Galerie Nelson Freeman, 75004 [map]Mel Bochner
Nelson-Freeman presents the second personal exhibition from American artist
Mel Bochner. A pioneer of conceptual art in the 60s, Bochner was one of the first artists to introduce language in visual arts. He interrogates the mechanisms of representation by using different mediums: photography, installation, film and painting. His work, enriched with philosophical thought, grammar and mathematical principles, introduces the sign in its relationship to the signifier and to meaning; highlighting the gap between words and their perception, between idea and the real object. For this new exhibition Bochner develops a series which began in 2004 for the Whitney Biennial entitled “Thesaurus Painting”. This series gets its name from Roget’s Thesaurus, a dictionary of synonyms which have accompanied Mel Bochner since his first language based works in 1966. The bright colours within the work help to reinforce the graphic power of the text within the works.
Alongside « Thesaurus Painting » Mel Bochner presents a series of paintings entitled « Blah Blah Blah », a series which again highlights the powerlessness of words. “What is interesting is the incongruity of all systems of language, not in what is said but in what can’t be said”. Mel Bochner
