Berggruen Arts & Culture and the Berggruen Institute Europe present at Casa dei Tre Oci the new exhibition by Joseph Kosuth, a pioneer of American conceptual art. With The-exchange-value-of-language-has-fallen-to-zero, curated by Mario Codognato and Adriana Rispoli, the artist invites viewers to reflect on the role of language in art and everyday life, demonstrating how meaning, context, and perception are inseparable.
At the entrance, the monumental work A Chain of Resemblance (2026) takes shape as an architecture of light and words inspired by Michel Foucault. The text unfolds in space in a visual and conceptual structure, highlighting how language is never neutral but always shaped by its environment, history, and the viewer’s reception. Here, words become experience, and the observer is immediately engaged in a dialogue between text, space, and personal reflection. The exhibition continues with Kosuth’s pioneering works from the 1960s, including the renowned One and Three Mirrors (1965), in which meaning is constructed through the relationship between image, object, and text, and where the viewer becomes part of the work through their own reflection. Alongside these are works such as The Fifth Investigation (1969), Text/Context (1978–1979), and Where Are You Standing?, a poster created for the 1976 Venice Biennale by the collective International Local, composed of Joseph Kosuth, Sarah Charlesworth, and Anthony McCall. In the city, the public poster The Seventh Investigation (1970) engages passersby and residents, extending Kosuth’s conceptual inquiry into language and community beyond the walls of Casa dei Tre Oci.
Joseph Kosuth has a long-standing connection with the city of Venice. He has participated in eight editions of the Venice Biennale and created permanent installations such as The Material of Ornament at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia and To Invent Relations (For Carlo Scarpa) in the Aula Magna Mario Baratto at Ca’ Foscari University. Between 2021 and 2025, he also lived and worked in Venice. His practice, developed over more than fifty years of an international career, explores language as both material and tool of knowledge, bridging philosophy, art, and everyday life, and creating spaces of reflection where the public becomes an active part of the work.
Featured image: Joseph Kosuth, Text/Context, 1978-1979
Collection of the artist, Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers, Ph. Ben Westoby
