• Mel Bochner billboard I70signshow daytime 02

    Mel Bochner "BLAH, BLAH, BLAH," 2013 (Click arrows for more images)
    On main billboard, in Hatton, Missouri, June–July 2014
  • Mel Bochner billboard I70SignShow night 04

    "BLAH, BLAH, BLAH" on main billboard site (click arrows for more images)
  • Bochner Satellite Street

    Mel Bochner, "BLAH, BLAH, BLAH," 2013 (click arrows for more images)
    On satellite billboard in Warrenton, Missouri, August–September 2015
  • Bocher Satellite Houses

    View of Bochner billboard with housing development (click arrows for more images)

A pioneer of conceptual art, Mel Bochner has since the 1960s questioned the clarity, function, and efficacy of language. Within the Sign Show, "BLAH BLAH BLAH" offered a direct and playful critique of Missouri’s surplus billboards, three times more than neighboring states and five times the national average. Along I-70, the hundreds of messages blend together in a numbing barrage. Many unrented signs are blank. Others declare their self-evident purpose with ads for ad space. When the Bochner work moved, its new spot adjacent to a housing development and nearby a Walmart slanted its meaning toward the generic, in architecture and commerce as well as language.
Video of billboard production
Video of billboard installation
Artist's Website: http://www.melbochner.net
Link to "Wall Street Journal" review of Mel Bochner's exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York.
Copyright © 2017 — I-70 Sign Show
All artist images, copyright © the respective artists

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