Mirrors

Mel Bochner's series of mirrored works feature seminal texts and themes from throughout the artist's career. Much of Bochner's work explores the nature of language and the ways in which it evolves. For works like Amazing, Bochner uses the thesaurus to create word lists, rearranging and adding or removing synonyms for sound and composition. Key phrases from his Exasperations series examine direct, aggressive language as an expression of irritation, annoyance, vexation, and ill-humor at the state of the world. If The Color Changes... presents a perplexing quote from Wittgenstein about the nature of color and uses its English translation to visually obscure and further confuse the text. In etching these texts into mirrored glass, Bochner speaks to the nature of vanity and self- reflection in all their various meanings and contradictions. The Latin noun vanitas is related to the Hebrew word hevel, a word whose definition includes the concept of transitoriness. Both the text and the materials featured in this series comment on the evolutionary nature of language and offer a meditation on the revealing nature of self reflection.