For nearly 60 years Mel Bochner's intellectual and material analysis of painting, photography and sculpture has yielded ground-breaking works that explore the intersection of linguistic and visual representation. As a leading figure within the conceptual and post-minimal art movements of the 1960s, he experimented in complicating the relationship between image and language.
His pioneering introduction of the use of language into the visual, led Harvard University art historian Benjamin Buchloh to describe his 1966 Working Drawing Books as 'probably the first conceptual art exhibition'.