Sixteen Isomorphs (Negative)

Since the 1960s, pioneering Conceptual artist Mel Bochner has produced a diverse and compelling body of work preoccupied with the gap between an idea and its material manifestation. By 1967 he had turned to photography to record time-based conceptual processes. In this work, the artist photographed rows of cubes from an angle and made negative prints. Bochner then cut them into quadrants and installed them in a random order. The term isomorph in the title refers to the equal areas of black and white in each image and in the composition as a whole. The final grouping of 16 Isomorphs (Negative) shows how Bochner could transform a single photograph of building blocks into a galaxy of nonexistent spaces.