Artists Index: Mel Bochner

Mel Bochner (Born 1940, Pittsburgh, USA. Lives and works in New York.) Mel Bochner belongs to a generation of conceptual artists whose intellectual rigour was combined with a precise and purposeful informality. The understanding being that the work would represent the world without getting preoccupied with materiality, with the production of value, with the inhibiting thingness of art objects. The elements Bochner chose to work with were typically ordinary and spare; newspapers, pebbles, nuts, string pennies, masking tape. So often the work in it’s entirety could be put away into a drawer, or thrown away only to be recreated later, whenever necessary. For Eastside Projects Bochner’s two works, Measurement: Plant 1969 and Meditation on the Theorum of Pythagoras 1972 both reflect on the divide between theory and reality and how we construct the world around us. A new version of Measurement: Plant made for the show incorporates silver birch trees and sculptural planters from the previous exhibition at Eastside Projects by Simon & Tom Bloor, as an extension of the space’s continuing exploration of cumulative art processes. Bochner has exhibited internationally since the 1960s. Recent solo shows include Marc Selwyn Gallery, Los Angeles, 2008, Spertus Museum, Chicago, 2006. Group shows include Lines, Grids, Stains and Words MOMA, New York, 2007, Open Systems: Rethinking Art c.1970, Tate Modern, 2005 and When Attitudes Become Form, Kunsthalle Bern, Berne, 1969.