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The Question Is the Answer: Joseph Kosuth at Almine Rech

The Question Is the Answer: Joseph Kosuth at Almine Rech July 24, 2025Art Events, ParisOff

The Art of Thought: Kosuth Returns with a Timeless Question

Walking into The Question at Almine Rech Paris feels less like entering a gallery and more like stepping into a slow-burning philosophical conversation—one that’s been unfolding for decades, and still refuses easy conclusions.

Joseph Kosuth doesn’t seduce with color or composition. He never has. Since the 1960s, he has made language his material, his medium, his obsession. In his universe, a word is never just a word—it’s a proposition, a portal, a provocation. And at 80, Kosuth is still relentlessly curious, still asking, still pushing.

Installation view of Joseph Kosuth
Tabula Rasa (14 Times), Almine Rech Shanghai, 2022 (Detail) Courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech
Photo: Alessandro Wang

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a trio of monumental clocks from his long-running series The Question. These aren’t functional objects. They’re conceptual monuments, inscribed with literary fragments that tick in rhythm with ideas rather than minutes. Here, time doesn’t measure—it meditates. You don’t check these clocks for the hour. You check them for perspective.

Portrait of Joseph Kosuth, 2013 Courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech Photo: Wolfgang Wesener

The show is punctuated by works from Kosuth’s foundational First Investigation series, where dictionary definitions are framed like relics, making language feel at once clinical and charged. His early neon texts glow in their familiar defiance—signage for a world we thought we understood, until he held a mirror to it.

This is not art for passive consumption. It’s art as intellectual architecture. You move through the space and feel yourself assembling meaning in real time—stumbling, returning, questioning. And isn’t that the point?

Kosuth’s presence in the canon of contemporary art is undeniable—MoMA, the Tate, the Louvre, and an impressive list of international institutions have long recognized the depth of his contribution. Yet here, in this exhibition, there’s no sense of a retrospective. This is not a look back. This is a continuation.

The Question doesn’t wrap things up. It keeps them open. It’s a quiet storm of references and resistance. It’s Kosuth reminding us—again—that to ask is always more powerful than to conclude.

Joseph Kosuth – “The Question”
September 12 – October 11, 2025
Almine Rech, Paris – 64 Rue de Turenne, 75003 Paris

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