Mel Bochner — Head Honcho For Sale

Head Honcho is one of Mel Bochner's most direct engagements with the language of bravado, built from a cascading list of synonyms for dominance and self-importance. The text reads, in Bochner's characteristic stacked lines: "HEAD HONCHO, TOP DOG, KING OF THE HILL, MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE... LAY DOWN THE LAW, CALL THE SHOTS, CRACK THE WHIP, RULE WITH AN IRON HAND." Piled on top of one another in bold block capitals, the phrases escalate from playful slang into something closer to menace, exposing the absurdity latent in the language of power.

Bochner worked the phrase across multiple periods and processes. Unique monoprint versions, made in oil with collage, engraving and embossment on hand-dyed handmade paper, date from as early as 2012, each one a one-off object rather than part of a numbered run. A 2020 silkscreen edition, printed in five colours on Lanaquarelle paper by Two Palms Press, produced 30 impressions measuring 63 x 48 inches, translating the same cascading text into a sharper, flatter printed register.

Writing in The Guardian, critic Adrian Searle described paintings like Head Honcho as boastful "braggarts" that "declare what they are and how they feel" through their piled-up synonym lists — a fitting description of a body of work that treats the vocabulary of self-aggrandisement as both subject and material, letting the words undercut themselves through sheer repetition.