Joseph Kosuth

JOSEPH KOSUTH (Toledo, Ohio, USA, 1945).
"616. When", 1990.
Mixed media on paper.
With Juana de Aizpuru Gallery label on the back.
Signed and dated.
Measurements: 110 x 150 cm; 113 x 153 cm (frame).
The number "616" has a special resonance. Visually, it can be perceived as a mirror number and conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth uses this feature to create this piece. The work is structured on a beige background, which acts as a neutral space. In the exact center of the frame, a clean white inscription stands out: "616. When", in a typography that radiates clarity, precision, and a language stripped of ornamentation. The choice of the number and the word evokes an enigmatic sensation; it is a fragment torn from language, a clue suspended in time that invites reflection on its own meaning or context.
Around this central axis is a series of handwritten notes, almost scribbled, in a more informal stroke that deliberately contrasts with the sobriety of the central letters. These notes, in pencil or graphite, suggest a thought process, a mental map or a conceptual exploration by the author. The marks of the artist's reasoning are not hidden, opening a window into the intimate dialogue Kosuth establishes with himself as he creates. The annotations seem to analyze ideas of linguistics, semiology, or relationships between meaning and representation.
Joseph Kosuth is one of the pioneers of Conceptual Art, his work has continuously explored the production and function of language as meaning within the field of art. Kosuth's works often reference that of Sigmund Freud, thus influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein's psychoanalysis and philosophy of language.His first conceptual work, Leaning Glass, consisted of an object, a photograph of it, and dictionary definitions of the words denoting it. Also in 1966 he embarked on Kosuth a series of works entitled Art as Idea as Idea, involving texts, through which I tested the condition of art. The works in this series took the form of photostat reproductions of dictionary definitions of words such as "water", "meaning" and "idea". These photographic images are attached certificates of ownership and documentation indicating that the works can be made and remade for exhibition purposes.One of his most famous works is One and Three Chairs. The piece features a physical chair, a photograph of that chair and the text of a dictionary definition of the word "chair." The photograph is a representation of the actual chair placed on the floor in the foreground of the work. The definition, posted on the same wall as the photograph, outlines in words the concept of what a chair is, in various incarnations. His text 'Art After Philosophy', written between 1968-69 had a major impact on thinking about art at the time and has since been seen as a kind of 'manifesto' of conceptual art insofar as it provided the only theoretical framework for practice at the time. It was an attack on Greenberg's formalism, what Kosuth saw as the last bastion of late, which had institutionalized modernism. He also concluded at the time what he had learned from Wittgenstein, dosed with Walter Benjamin, among others, as it applied to that transitional moment in art. In the early 1970s, concerned about his "ethnocentricity as a white, male artist," Kosuth enrolled at the New School to study anthropology and visited the Trobriand Islands in the South Pacific and the Huallaga Indians in the Peruvian Amazon. For Kosuth, his studies in cultural anthropology were a logical consequence that followed his interest in the anthropological dimension and in language.
The relationship between language and art has taken the form of installations, museum exhibitions, public commissions and publications throughout Europe, America and Asia. This includes his participation in five editions of Documenta and four editions of the Venice Biennale, once representing Hungary in its official pavilion (1993). He has received numerous awards and distinctions and teaches and lectures at various universities and institutions of international prestige. His work is part of the collections of a large selection of museums throughout the world.