Joseph Kosuth

Private Collection, Germany
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Condition: This work is in very good condition.
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Untitled (Grey Concrete Floor Surface) is one of the artist's groundbreaking works from his most important and influential period. In it Kosuth introduces a concept that he was to employ and develop in his retrospectively-titled 'Proto-Investigations' series (for example 'One and Three Chairs') by juxtaposing a textual description of an object - 'GREY CONCRETE FLOOR SURFACE' - with its physical counterpart. Each of the four square, glass panels has a single word silkscreened at it centre, and is lain down on a grey, concrete floor surface in sequence so that looking at the grey, concrete, surface of the floor and the words on the glass occur simultaneously and produce the same meaning. In doing so Kosuth emphasizes the overlooked conceptual relationships and disparities between an object's description and its visual image - an investigation that has formed the central crux of his concept-based art making ever since.

In the mid 1960s, Conceptual art revolutionised critical discussion surrounding the ideals of post-modernism and brought recognition to the use of various forms of theory by artists, critics, curators and historians alike. At the movement's centre was the work and essays of Joseph Kosuth which questioned the nature of artistic practice, the role of the artist, and the validity of the art object itself. His work became a cornerstone for the evolution of all conceptual art; a movement which although relatively short-lived, has had greater influence on subsequent artistic developments than any other neo-avant-garde movement of the Post war period.

Pivotal to Kosuth's position was a belief that "art's only claim is for art". He strove to ascertain this through deconstructing the traditional unity of an artwork through applying a systematic approach of reductivism to each of its component parts. This involved negating art's conventional aesthetic content and replacing it with a work's physical object-ness and materiality. In particular he focused upon the complex link between text and image, and between image and subjectivity.