New York
Peter Freeman Gallery
Mel Bochner, who is best known for his theoretical notations and use of basic materials such as stones, masking tape, walnuts, glass shards, burnt matches, and chalk, began his career using mathematically derived determinants as a means to articulate a playful, albeit rigorous analysis of sculpture. A recent survey of his iconic works, “Mel Bochner: Proposition and Process: A Theory of Sculpture (1968–1973),” clearly situated his influence on the development of process art, particularly among Post-Minimal sculptors working in the late ’60s and ’70s. This timely and superbly mapped-out exhibition further offered a link that today’s digital artists might find enlightening. Less constructed than placed, these astonishing works, with their rigor and simplicity, are a delight to behold. Bochner’s formal vocabulary brings us back to basics, back to the notion that structure precedes form, as it did for the Russian avant-garde… see the entire review in the print version of March’s Sculpture magazine.
