Green Gothic text stating 'D. L. Are Return the Question' on a black background.

REVIEW: JOSEPH KOSUTH AT SPRÜTH MAGERS

TEXT BY TANYA Mascarenhas

Interior of a room with a white fireplace and two large windows. There are neon signs on the walls. The left sign reads 'Did I tell you that' and the right sign reads 'A SENTENCE SELF-DESCRIBED TWICE, A SENTENCE SELF-DESCRIBED TWICE'.

Installation view: Joseph Kosuth’s The Question at Sprüth Magers. Photography by the author.

Joseph Kosuth’s solo exhibition The Question at Sprüth Magers‘ London gallery encompasses light, philosophy and the new. The American artist presents new ideas in an ever-moving world in relation to art, its rejection of the object form and its public. Upon entering the exhibition, bold, neon signs present themselves as textual, yet permeate the conscience with a myriad of philosophical musings. Art and philosophy manifest in tandem, coming to life with the allure of luminous text.

Neon art installation on a white gallery wall, including colorful text reading 'The coloured intermediary between two colours' and a yellow neon outline of a human face or mask.

Installation view: Joseph Kosuth’s The Question at Sprüth MagersPhotography by the author.

The political and cultural happenings of the 1960s and ‘70s allow Kosuth to propel his art into a broader social and political context, presenting a temporality that literally and figuratively moves with the times. The collective works allude to postmodernism, referencing the collapse of traditional aesthetic categories in the latter half of the twentieth century that gave way to a new aesthetic regime. Kosuth’s strong focus on language plays with a modern reality, posing the question, or questions in the plural.

Round wall clock with black numbers and hands, showing the time as approximately 3:19. There is text on the clock face with a quote by John McTaggart that says, "We come back then, to the main question." The clock has a silver rim and is mounted on a plain white wall.

Joseph Kosuth, The Question (J.M), 2024. All rights reserved to the artist and Sprüth Magers, Photography by the author.

One of the main works that directly addresses this theme is The Question (J.M), which presents an enlarged clock inscribed with a quote with John McTaggart: “We come back, then, to the main question”. The movement of the clock’s hands and its mechanics are strongly in line with a universal understanding of time; time moves in a linear and standardised fashion and returns, yet again, to the notion of the question.

Three doors displayed side by side on a white wall with a plaque to the right. The doors are black, natural wood, and dark wood. There is a quote or text illuminated above the doors.
A white card with a dictionary-style definition of the word 'door,' including historical and linguistic details.

Left: Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Doors [Ety./Hist/], 1965. Right: detail. All rights reserved to the artist and Sprüth Magers, Photography by the author.

The viewer enters the exhibition through a door that acts as an entry point as well as citing the work One and Three Doors [Ety./Hist/] (1965), which in turn addresses a physical object through its use of static photographic form and the dictionary definition of “door”. Through numerous literary and linguistic allusions, the viewer becomes a reader, or viewer-reader. These viewer-readers are conditioned to experience what could be considered sublime sensations, perhaps emerging from an overwhelming engagement with language, presenting itself as a series of signs and overbearing philosophical thoughts. Works such as #II49. (On Color/Multi #2)’, present text reading “II49.The coloured intermediary between two colours” in white, cobalt blue, ruby red, yellow, orange, violet and green neon. The work appears playful and alluring, with each colour associated with a different word and sensation, drawing on both objectivity and subjectivity.

Colorful neon sign on a plain wall reading '149. The coloured intermediary between two colours.'

Joseph Kosuth, #II49. (On Color/Multi #2), 1991. All rights reserved to the artist and Sprüth Magers, Photography by the author.

Neon art piece on a white wall featuring handwritten text in cursive, with some words illuminated in blue, connected by transparent wires, and a framed document or poem below.

Joseph Kosuth, Fetishism Corrected #2’ (Blue), 1988. All rights reserved to the artist and Sprüth Magers, Photography by the author.

Sigmund Freud’s influence on the artist in the 1980s allowed for the production of a body of work directly addressing themes of psychoanalysis, again drawing on the subject/object. Works such as Fetishism Corrected #2’ (Blue) draw on the Freudian object fetishism of  a subject’s relationship to the self through an object, which, in this case, can emerge from interpretation of the art object, or object as/of art. Once again, there are no intermediaries, where everything is either/or. The exhibition’s rooms are spacious yet the viewers’ interactions with the was individual and as collective, bringing together a whirlwind of concepts, language and forms that become increasingly familiar. With these actions being all too purposeful, we are invited to carry on the question, into the complexities and realities of our world.

Joseph Kosuth’s The Question is on at Sprüth Magers in London until 15th March.

Published 11 March 2025.