Silences

Historical figure of conceptual art, of which he was both theoretician and a major representative in the late sixties, Joseph Kosuth offers via this work an homage to philosophy and books. The installation consists of a thousand works piled on the ground filling a room and paving a path for the visitor. Michel Foucault’s quote from which the work’s title is derived also illustrates this intention: “Imagination does not build itself up against the real, denying it or compensating for it; it spreads itself out between the signs from book to book, in the interstices of repetition and commentaries; it is born and takes form in the text’s in-between. It’s a phenomenon of the library.”

phenomenon of the library, 2006
Glass serigraphies, neon, books; various dimensions
Courtesy Gallery Almine Rech, Paris-Brussels

© Adagp, Paris 2009

Toledo, Ohio, USA, 1945 – Lives and works in Rom and New York