Mel Bochner

Mel Bochner (born 1940, Pittsburgh) is an American artist whose practice from the mid-1960s onwards placed language, measurement and systems of notation at the centre of Conceptual art. Working initially in New York, Bochner was among the first artists to use photocopied documents as an exhibition medium, and his early works challenged the boundaries between art object, documentation and idea.

His Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art (1966), presented at the School of Visual Arts in New York, is widely regarded as one of the first Conceptual art exhibitions. Subsequent works explored the relationship between language and perception, using thesaurus entries, measurement systems and numerical sequences as both subject and form. His large-scale word paintings, developed from the 1990s onwards, brought this engagement with language into direct confrontation with painting’s material surface.

Bochner’s participation in group exhibitions such as Photonotations (Rosa Esman Gallery, 1976) reflects his sustained engagement with photography as a medium for conceptual investigation. His work is held in major collections internationally, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Tate, London.