REVIEWS MEL BOCHNER
MEL BOCHNER: one.linnine.linnine.lineight.linendash.captwo.linzero.linzero.linseven.lin: PAINTING,
SCULPTURE AND INSTALLATION
GALERIE NELSON, PARIS
3 MARCH – 20 APRIL
Mel Bochner, 2007 (installation view). Courtesy Galerie Nelson
Like one of his language-based paintings from the mid-1990s, where Sol LeWitt et al., and presented these in four identical ring binders on four
a tautological phrase from Wittgenstein’s 1977 Remarks on Colour ( ‘ To identical white plinths in an otherwise empty exhibition space. Stripped of
observe is not the same as to look at or to view… One observes in order authentic, fetishistic, ‘artistic’ value, anti-transcendental, anti-illusion, anti-
to see what one would not see if one did not observe’), is superimposed in symbolic, anti-virtuosic, non-sublime and aura-free, this visualisation of the
red paint in English over the original German in blue, Mel Bochner’s recent creative process – ‘thought made visible’ – was not necessarily meant to be
works are dif_f_i cult to read. Not because one text obliterates another, or one viewed as art; but by being viewed in an art context it became imbued with
system (the verbal, the measurable, the logical) is dismantled by another art meaning, and thus became art.
(the intuitive, the unmeasurable, the arbitrary), but because the resulting The same argument is made by the pieces in this show – Event
object, be it painting, drawing or sculpture, is so damn entertaining. A Horizon (Paris) (2006), for example, in which ‘readymade’, pre-stretched
thesaurus painting like Lazy (2004), for example, in which brightly coloured canvases of dif_f erent dimensions and colours abut one another at eye
words, read left to right and top to bottom, devolve from straight synonyms level. Each canvas is bifurcated by the same horizontal line, continuous
for the title (‘languid’, ‘listless’, ‘lax’) to associative colloquialisms (‘couch except where broken by measurement notations showing the length of a
potato’, ‘twiddle your thumbs’, ‘sit on your ass’, ‘go with the fl ow’). single canvas or a group. Again, barely containing content, barely a work
Colourful paintings of colourful language – delightful, diverting, of art, but obviously a work of art, and more to the point, because of their
pleasing, comical, big-time fun, good time had by all. Hardly what one seductive colours, a beautiful work of art. It is this seductive, decorative
expects from a founding prelate of the traditionally austere order of aspect that is disruptive, that destabilises established boundaries, setting
minimalist art. Yet despite the cupcake colours decorating the language- Bochner apart from the conventionally conceptual. A far cry from
and-number-game works, Bochner’s preoccupations in his fi rst show in appropriated photocopies in black and white, the sensuous objects in this
Paris since 1994 remain those informing his fi rst important work, Working show, ‘tastefully’ arranged by a Yale School of Art professor, are among
drawings and other visible things on paper not necessarily meant to be viewed contemporary art’s most eye-catching and aesthetically satisfying surfaces.
as art, at New York’s School of Visual Arts in 1966. In that exhibition, The visual and the verbal, no longer incommensurable, but wrapped up
Bochner photocopied the drawings, diagrams, invoices and scores of in pretty packages and turned into eye candy – for us to look at, view and
John Cage, Dan Graham, Robert Smithson, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, observe at our leisure. Now that’s a concept. Christopher Mooney
one.linthree.linseven.lin ARTREVIEW
p123-137 Reviews AR May07.indd 137 28/3/07 05:36:40
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