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Almine Rech

Joseph Kosuth Existential Time

Feb 12 — Mar 26, 2022 | Paris, Turenne (Front Space)

For the safety of our visitors and staff, masks must be worn by all visitors upon entrance and hand sanitiser will be provided at the door and throughout the gallery. Inquire about the exhibition: inquiries@alminerech.com The gallery is open from 11 am until 7 pm.

Almine Rech is pleased to present Existential Time, an exhibition of new works by Joseph Kosuth that is a continuation of a series of installations begun in 2020.

Kosuth’s interest is in the meaning of time as we experience it within the array of contexts life provides. In the sixteen individual works titled ‘Quoted Clocks’, Kosuth’s use of the analog clock referentially anchors the concept of time to its most literal and familiar visual representation, serving as a canny reminder that time is contained in a clock no more than the complex process of making meaning in art is contained in a single object. However precise the mechanism, a clock functions visually as little more than a punctuation mark in need of a sentence, allowing those who look at it, collectively, individually, only a glimpse of a moment that never simply passes. By removing the clock as a fabricated object from its cultural context of functionality and then combining it with quoted language also taken from prior contexts, ‘Quoted Clocks’ further punctuates the insufficiencies, limits, and surpluses of meaning that characterize our perceptions of duration. As an ongoing series of reflections, Kosuth’s Existential Time invites us to reflect on our own lived experience as it flashes by or hangs heavily, leading to questions of consciousness, to what we mean within time. 

The pioneer of Conceptual art, throughout his career, Kosuth has insisted on maintaining the integrity and rigor of his fundamental insight that the ‘visual’ component of art is only one part of a complex structure that produces meaning within art, and not its basis. Since the 1960s, Kosuth has used inherited meanings, particularly language-based categories, such as quotes, names, and definitions, to construct new meaning in visual work. His work poses fundamental questions about the presentation and reception of art by investigating the very categories that define what art is. He selects elements for his work from contexts outside of visual art: philosophy, literature, history, popular culture, dictionaries, scientific theory, and linguistics, among others. 

Press release

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Selected artworks

  • Joseph Kosuth,                                      Quoted Clocks #16 (A.R.), 2022

    Joseph Kosuth Quoted Clocks #16 (A.R.), 2022

    Clock and vinyl
    Reads: Is it later yet?
    Jennifer E. Smith
    40 x 4.5 cm
    16 x 2 in

  • Joseph Kosuth,                                      Quoted Clocks #15 (A.R.), 2022

    Joseph Kosuth Quoted Clocks #15 (A.R.), 2022

    Clock and vinyl
    Reads: No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.
    James Joyce
    40 x 4.5 cm
    16 x 2 in

  • Joseph Kosuth,                                      Quoted Clocks #14 (A.R.), 2022

    Joseph Kosuth Quoted Clocks #14 (A.R.), 2022

    Clock and vinyl
    Reads: Make it a mistake.
    Gertrude Stein
    40 x 4.5 cm
    16 x 2 in

  • Joseph Kosuth,                                      Quoted Clocks #13 (A.R.), 2022

    Joseph Kosuth Quoted Clocks #13 (A.R.), 2022

    Clock and vinyl
    Reads: First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.
    Virginia Woolf
    40 x 4.5 cm
    16 x 2 in

  • Joseph Kosuth,                                      Quoted Clocks #12 (A.R.), 2022

    Joseph Kosuth Quoted Clocks #12 (A.R.), 2022

    Clock and vinyl
    Reads: Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity.
    Djuna Barnes
    40 x 4.5 cm
    16 x 2 in

  • Joseph Kosuth,                                      Quoted Clocks #11 (A.R.), 2022

    Joseph Kosuth Quoted Clocks #11 (A.R.), 2022

    Clock and vinyl
    Reads: The beginning is always today.
    Mary Wollstonecraft
    40 x 4.5 cm
    16 x 2 in

  • Joseph Kosuth,                                      Quoted Clocks #10 (A.R.), 2022

    Joseph Kosuth Quoted Clocks #10 (A.R.), 2022

    Clock and vinyl
    Reads: Qu’on finissait par s’habituer à tout.
    Albert Camus
    40 x 4.5 cm
    16 x 2 in

  • Joseph Kosuth,                                      Quoted Clocks #9 (A.R.), 2022

    Joseph Kosuth Quoted Clocks #9 (A.R.), 2022

    Clock and vinyl
    Reads: La visibilité est un piège.
    Michel Foucault
    40 x 4.5 cm
    16 x 2 in

  • Joseph Kosuth,                                      Quoted Clocks #8 (A.R.), 2022

    Joseph Kosuth Quoted Clocks #8 (A.R.), 2022

    Clock and vinyl
    Reads: On ne peut sortir du quotidien.
    Henri Lefebvre
    40 x 4.5 cm
    16 x 2 in

  • Joseph Kosuth,                                      Quoted Clocks #7 (A.R.), 2022

    Joseph Kosuth Quoted Clocks #7 (A.R.), 2022

    Clock and vinyl
    Reads: Toute séparation est un lien.
    Simone Weil
    40 x 4.5 cm
    16 x 2 in

  • Joseph Kosuth,                                      Quoted Clocks #6 (A.R.), 2022

    Joseph Kosuth Quoted Clocks #6 (A.R.), 2022

    Clock and vinyl
    Reads: The misfortune of today is no more real than the happiness of the past.
    Jorge Luis Borges
    40 x 4.5 cm
    16 x 2 in

  • Joseph Kosuth,                                      Quoted Clocks #5 (A.R.), 2022

    Joseph Kosuth Quoted Clocks #5 (A.R.), 2022

    Clock and vinyl
    Reads: We look at the present through a rear-view mirror.
    Marshall McLuhan
    40 x 4.5 cm
    16 x 2 in

  • Joseph Kosuth,                                      Quoted Clocks #4 (A.R.), 2022

    Joseph Kosuth Quoted Clocks #4 (A.R.), 2022

    Reads: Time and space are modes by which we think, and not conditions in which we live.
    Albert Einstein
    40 x 4.5 cm
    16 x 2 in

  • Joseph Kosuth,                                      Quoted Clocks #3 (A.R.), 2022

    Joseph Kosuth Quoted Clocks #3 (A.R.), 2022

    Clock and vinyl
    Reads: Each morning the day lies like a fresh shirt on our bed.
    Walter Benjamin
    40 x 4.5 cm
    16 x 2 in

  • Joseph Kosuth,                                      Quoted Clocks #2 (A.R.), 2022

    Joseph Kosuth Quoted Clocks #2 (A.R.), 2022

    Clock and vinyl
    Reads: We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
    John Cage
    40 x 4.5 cm
    16 x 2 in

  • Joseph Kosuth,                                      Quoted Clocks #1 (A.R.), 2022

    Joseph Kosuth Quoted Clocks #1 (A.R.), 2022

    Clock and vinyl
    Reads: One night I dreamed I was locked in my Father’s watch.
    John Ciardi
    40 x 4.5 cm
    16 x 2 in