In his painting, Mel Bochner provides paired views of cubes, which seem to be moving either toward or away from the intersection of grided planes. Although executed in an abstract way, the careful arrangement of lines within the painting creates a sense of spatial depth on the two-dimensional surface like that found in representational images from centuries past. However, Bochner deliberately interrupts the spatial illusion by mismatching the lines of the left and right sides of his painting and leaving an empty space in the middle that allows us to see the shallow construction of the artwork and the reality of the wall behind it. The title Optic Chiasma is a medical term describing the X-shaped intersection where the optic nerves meet the brain. The painting itself points to the discrepancy between the material information that our eyes take in (a flat painted surface with a square hole in it) and the way the brain processes and interprets this information (as dynamic cubes converging or dispersing in space).