Word: bochner
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...career in photography. The photographs show how Bochner’s originality of thought hovers between artistic movements. While structurally indebted to minimalism, the photographic process denies the materiality of the object, thus gesturing towards conceptualism. But, because the photographic process is inevitably influenced by some degree of chance, Bochner is not simply translating unmediated literal concepts directly into visual form. Instead, he allows the interference and complication of the artistic process to advance the conceptual foundations of the work...
...both presentation and content, the photographs depict the formation of these assembled cubic modules and their dependence on a mathematically predetermined model. Schematic diagrams that are evidence of the work’s interest in seriality are shown in conjunction with several views of the block structures. As Bochner stated, this series is principally about the process rather than the object. Attempting to undermine the accepted minimalist notion championing the “object nature” of art, these objects actually seek to be as visually uninteresting as possible in order not to distract from their purpose as models...
...asks the viewer probing questions. Understanding linear one-point and two-point perspective as an invented illusionistic device or artistic tool, one will also observe that this ready-made and prefabricated formulaic system of perspective is unnecessary in photography as the image inherently depicts depth on its own. Nevertheless, Bochner applies the device of perspective to photography as a way of analyzing and looking at the artistic device itself, rather than actually using it. Portraying linear perspective as the image of a black or white grid on a contrasting ground in space, he is effectively displaying...
This codified riddle of illusionism is taken one step further in the manipulation of his former perspective images through “surface deformations.” Bochner takes the negatives and photographs of his perspective series as the literal object and subject of his next exploration: “I would use the photographs and negatives that I had and treat them as objects. By changing it as a surface, the photo-grid in perspective becomes a map of itself through deformation and crumpling. I had a photograph developed, soaked it until it dissolved, let that dry and shrivel...
What results are beautiful and mountainous images that are a far cry from minimalism’s hard edge with their rich tones, palpable textures and perceived movement. In these distorted surfaces where the crumpled grids are maps of themselves, the viewer discovers, as Bochner put it, objects conflicted about their own identity...