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November Issue 2006
Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, Features Works by Mel Bochner
The
Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at
Greensboro, NC, is presenting the exhibit, Mel Bochner: Drawing
From Four Decades, the first exhibition to offer an overview
of the artist's drawing practice, on view through Dec. 23, 2006.
That drawing was at the center of Bochner's art at the start of his career has been acknowledged by several exhibitions highlighting works on paper created between 1966 and 1973. Less well known, however, is that drawing has remained key to Bochner's art over subsequent decades, during which he both expanded upon his early work and extended his conceptual, visual, and emotional reach.
This exhibition includes approximately thirty works that suggest the density of Bochner's approach and the role drawing has played both in the creation of unique works and as a methodology essential to installation, painting, and sculpture.
In 1981, Bochner offered the following about his work, "Drawing isa process of testing differences. In the process of questioning distinctions, the mind, eye, and hand sometimes shift in and out of synchronization. Speculation, or the suspension of decision, leads below the surface of order into the ambiguity of conflicting perceptions. Drawing becomes a meditation on the meaning of certainty. Erasures pile up. Containing the archaeology of its own doubts, the work cuts across the conventions of finish. A tissue of overlaid impulses, the tangle of contradictions suddenly implodes into a drawing."
Bochner's commitment to certain theoretical markers will be seen in a broader visual context than previously, conveying the impressive range of the artist's drawings over the course of his career. The distinct power of graphite, ink, and color pencil drawings from the late sixties and early seventies, which are generally small in size, is here placed in the context of the visually impressive large scale works that followed, drawn in charcoal and pastel, and casein, acrylic, and oil paints, thereby revealing the power of Bochner's extended practice. In this way the depth of the artist's intellectual rigor may be considered within the breadth of a career that has evolved and become visually richer and more provocative over the course of four decades.
Mel Bochner: Drawing From Four Decades is organized by Ruth Fine, curator of special projects in modern art at the National Gallery of Art, working closely with the artist. Accompanying the show will be a fully illustrated catalogue with an introductory essay by Fine and a chronology of exhibitions specific to Bochner's drawings. The exhibition was assembled from the private collections of the artist and of noted drawing collectors, Wynn and Sarah-Ann Kramarsky. It originated at Mr. Kramarsky's former SoHo street space where for years he rotated a selection from his collection of some 1,700 works on paper. The show has also traveled to The Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, and will continue on to the San Diego Museum of Art, California (Jan. 13 through Mar. 18, 2007) after the Weatherspoon Art Museum.
Bochner was born in Pittsburgh, PA, in 1940. He lives and works in New York City. Bochner has had a number of one-person, drawings only exhibitions between 1966 and 2006, nationally and internationally.
For further information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the Museum at 336/334-5770 or visit (www.weatherspoon.uncg.edu).
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