Joseph Kosuth at Sean Kelly

Foucault likened writing to "a labyrinth into which I can venture": a place constructed by the author according to his own logic, and yet also a place where he could become lost, where identity was fluid and he could "have no face." Joseph Kosuth has summoned this utopian notion for a series of installations made of walls containing quotes from nearly 100 authors, including political figures, artists, philosophers, novelists and poets. In the most recent, a labyrinth into which I can venture (a play of works by guests and foreigners), 2006, a maze of black walls was covered with such quotes, reflecting a kind of linguistic horror vacui. Some phrases were painted directly onto the walls in dozens of neat typefaces; others were in neon, and still other texts were framed or on wall plaques or printed on photographs. Works by Kosuth spanning over 40 years, originally conceived for diverse contexts like Documenta 9 and the facade of the Gardner Museum, were unified in a concentrated, theatrical display.

Passages from the philosopher Walter Benjamin and literary theorist David Schalkwyk wove from room to room near ceilings and floors, like Ariadne's thread. Still, many visitors found themselves genuinely lost in the exhibition's 21 rooms and passageways, and calls of "Hello?" and "Which way out?" could be heard. The sheer volume of text meant that there was no possibility of mastering the situation by reading everything. Wandering the labyrinth entailed surrendering to its disorienting format, reading snatches of text here and there, establishing individual landmarks. Spectatorship was a random, desultory activity in this environment of information overload. To elicit awareness of the limitations and highly individual nature of apprehension was surely one of Kosuth's goals.

The earliest of Kosuth's own works in the labyrinth was One and Three Photographs (1965), an example of the numerous tautologies Kosuth presented in an influential early series. Comprising a vintage photograph, a photograph of a photograph, and a photographic enlargement of a dictionary definition of "photograph," One and Three Photographs manages to be at once entirely self-referential and to raise questions about language, representation and the location of meaning that are as old as Plato's cave. The 40-year-old work is a reminder that these questions are renegotiated with every information age. As an abundance of texts and ideas knitted together in a dislocating space, a labyrinth into which I can venture (a play of works by guests and foreigners) can't help but evoke the logic of the Internet--another space of facelessness and fluidity.

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COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning