Joseph Kosuth
‘ The Language of Equilibrium / Il Linguaggio dell’Equilibrio’, 2007
Isola di San Lazzaro degli Armeni, Venice, Italy
Courtesy: Lia Rumma Gallery, Milan
Photo: © Daniele Nalesso
Joseph Kosuth
‘ ni apparence ni illusion’,
Musée du Louvre, October 2009
Installation détail
Joseph Kosuth: ‘Neither Appearance nor Illusion’ at the Louvre, Paris
Sentences written in French using neon tubing are suspended along the walls of the medieval Louvre.Joseph Kosuth, a major figure of the contemporary international art scene, temporarily lays claim to theexcavated ancient Louvre, offering visitors a dense and luminous work.
October 22, 2009 – June 21, 2010
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The influential American artist Joseph Kosuth is widelyregarded as a leading proponent, and one of the founders,of conceptual art, a movement which emerged in NewYork in the 1960s. His work considers art to be theproduction of meaning and thus the idea, or concept,becomes the defining component of a work of art, ofteneliminating the materiality of the art object altogether.Since the mid-1960’s, Kosuth’s work has focused on theconnections between words and things, between languageand representation. As his work is conceptually basedand not media defined, he employs various strategies forhis work, from photos with common objects or neontubing (Centre Pompidou Collection) to texts sandblastedin stone (Champollion Monument, Places des Écritures,Figeac). Kosuth create installations with texts, oftenmonumental in size, usually comprised of quotationsfrom different sources: literature, philosophy,anthropology, among others. His public works, as well asworks in most public and private collections, can befound in most countries in Europe, The United States andJapan and elsewhere. Joseph Kosuth’s most recentinstallations include a project on the Isola di San Lazzarofor the Venice Biennale in 2007 and another at La CasaEncendida in Madrid in 2008.
This time, the artist has decided to work in the moats ofthe medieval Louvre and to write on the old walls of themedieval palace, encouraging the visitor to rediscoverthis mysterious, underground space.
The title of this installation, ‘Neither Appearance norIllusion’ (‘ni apparence ni illusion’) is taken from a quoteof Friedrich Nietzsche. The installation’s fifteensentences, distributed in various positions along thewalls, suggest a quest both experiential and introspective.They play on the complex relationships between history,archeology and the role of the visitor to complete thework themselves. The artist, an originator ofappropriation and well known for the use of texts andquotations of others for his works, has decided in thiscase, and for the first time since 1979, to construct thetexts himself.
‘Fifteen stones in place, all out of shadow, these lit wordsmake visible both the viewer and the viewed. The wall,the passage’.
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