It will be the Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice, to host from March 28 to November 22, 2026 The-exchange-value-of-language-has-fallen-to-zero (“The exchange-value-of-language-has-fallen-to-zero”), an exhibition by Joseph Kosuth curated by Mario Codognato and Adriana Rispoli for Berggruen Arts & Culture and Berggruen Institute Europe.
Born in 1945, Kosuth is among the leading exponents ofconceptual art and has placed language at the center of his practice, both as content and as an object of analysis. The Venetian exhibition brings together historical works and a new installation conceived for the main entrance of the exhibition space. It is A Chain of Resemblance (2026), a large-scale intervention based on a text by Michel Foucault. The work addresses how meaning takes shape in the relationship between text and context, highlighting how language is influenced by the environment in which it appears and the ways in which it is received.
The second floor of the Three Oci houses a selection of works from the 1960s. These include One and Three Mirrors (1965), considered among the artist’s most incisive works. The installation articulates meaning through the relationship between image, object and text. The viewer’s reflection enters the work’s device and becomes an integral part of it, introducing a variable element that affects perception. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s reflection that meaning coincides with use is a constant reference in Kosuth’s research. In One and Three Mirrors the ordinary function of the mirror is redefined in a representational and conceptual sense, with a specific focus on the mechanisms through which language contributes to the construction of identity. Three adjacent rooms present works that question authorship and redefine notions of audience, community, and collaboration. On display are The Fifth Investigation (1969), Text/Context (1978-1979) and Where Are You Standing? (1976), a poster made for the 1976 Venice Biennale as part of the International Local collective formed by Sarah Charlesworth, Joseph Kosuth and Anthony McCall. The poster is repurposed on this occasion. The Seventh Investigation (1970) is also scheduled to be made and installed in a Venetian public space during the exhibition period.
Kosuth’s relationship with Venice is well-established over time. The artist lived and worked in the city between 2021 and 2025, but his relationship with the lagoon context goes back decades. He has taken part in eight editions of the Art Biennale, representing the Hungarian Pavilion in 1993 and receiving an Honorable Mention. Since 1997, the permanent neon installation The Material of Ornament has been on display at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, while To Invent Relations (For Carlo Scarpa) was commissioned for the 2016 Architecture Biennale and placed in the Aula Magna Mario Baratto at Ca’ Foscari University.
Joseph Kosuth is considered among the pioneers of conceptual and installation art. Since the 1960s he has introduced works grounded in the use of language and strategies of appropriation, developing a decades-long inquiry into the role of meaning and the relationship between words and artistic practice. His research has been articulated in installations, museum exhibitions, public commissions and publications in Europe, the Americas and Asia.
Throughout his career he has received numerous awards, including a Cassandra Foundation grant in 1968, the Brandeis Award (1990), the Frederick Wiseman Award (1991), Honorable Mention at the Venice Biennale (1993), and the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France (1993). Subsequent honors include the Laurea Honoris Causa in Philosophy and Letters from the University of Bologna (2001), the Ehrenzeichen für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich (2003), the Doctor Honoris Causa from theInstituto Superior de Arte of Havana (2015), the Wen Xin Award from the Ministry of Culture of Taiwan (2019), and medals from the National Arts Club of New York (2022) and the Accademia Albertina of Turin (2025).
Major public projects include Ni Apparence, Ni Illusion at the Louvre in Paris (2009), Causa Sui at the State Council of The Hague (2011), W.F.T. (San Francisco) at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium (2016), One Field to the Next at Taipei Central Station (2018), La Signification at the Magritte Museum in Brussels (2019), and Located World (Miami Beach) at the city’s Convention Center (2019). Born in Toledo, Ohio, Kosuth studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art, the School of Visual Arts in New York and the New School for Social Research. He has taught at a number of international institutions, including the School of Visual Arts, the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg, the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart, the Kunstakademie in Munich, and the IUAV in Venice, and has been a visiting professor at universities such as Yale, Cornell, NYU, UCLA, Oxford, and the Sorbonne. He currently lives and works between New York and Rome.
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| Joseph Kosuth at the Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice: language at the center of new exhibition |
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