Castelli Gallery, 24 W 40th Street, is pleased to present ‘Dot, Point, Period’: a Curated Installation by Joseph Kosuth. Since the 1960s, Kosuth has used the “curated installation” as a key conceptual/aesthetic strategy for exploring questions of authorship and the basic nature of art. ‘Dot, Point, Period’ will be the first time such an installation has been displayed in New York City since Kosuth’s seminal, The Brooklyn Museum Collection: The Play of the Unmentionable was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum in 1990.

‘Dot, Point, Period’ focuses on the dot or period as a graphic form that marks out a visual space and in so doing defines meaning in both written language and art. By punctuating intervals that delimit thoughts and also indicate moments of rest—pauses for the intake of breath—the period indexes the cadence of oral speech within text. Similarly, in art, the dot, fragment, or stroke registers visual continuities and ruptures that establish significant relationships between the constituent elements of an image. In this respect, the dot-form functions as a useful aid for shaping and coding meaning in both visual and verbal mediums, yet its rules are not essentially fixed in either. When considered independently from the structures of grammar, syntax, or composition, the dot’s semantic value remains indeterminate, awaiting the contextualizing framework of a given text or image. Consequently, the dot’s significance derives from its use, determined by convention and repetition, by what is built through and around it. The dot registers the influence of context in determining the significance of its component forms.

“Dot, Point, Period” includes works, images, or documents by/of: Richard Artschwager, Ay-O, John Baldessari, Wolfgang Berkowski, Trisha Brown, John Cage, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Sarah Charlesworth, Peter Coffin, Wallis Couverte, Gino di Domenicis, Marcel Duchamp, Seamus Farrell, Michelle Grabner, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Mohssin Harraki, Damien Hirst, Alfredo Jaar, Jasper Johns, William E. Jones, On Kawara, Zerek Kempf, Joseph Kosuth, Yayoi Kusama, Louise Lawler, Barry Le Va, Roy Lichtenstein, Sanna Marander + Niklas Tafra, Paul McCarthy, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, Walid Raad (The Atlas Group), Tim Rollins + K.O.S., Ed Ruscha, Lorna Simpson, Gwen Smith, Haim Steinbach, Kunie Sugiura, Atsuko Tanaka, Gian Maria Tosatti, Gavin Turk, Jorinde Voigt, William Wegman, Xu Bing, Michio Yoshihara, Michel Zumpf