Many artists play with this notion of what is "real," this piece by Joseph Kosuth is an excellent example of this exploration...the study of symbol and meaning and how it is stretched and adjusted for the artist's purposes...when someone says, "think of a chair," what comes to mind? Can you only see the chair in the image? Or an ornate, Queen Ann chair...maybe a bean bag chair...Joseph's chair exists in three-dimensions, two-dimensions and in a conceptual definition...the same chair, but is it? I would say definitely not, and to its extreme, it is never the same chair, as long as time moves forward...you are manipulated and put through some conceptual paces here...forced to confront the "reality" of our symbolic world - thoughts, words, and images stand in for individual concepts of the material world...why does he pursue this line of inquisition? What can he gain from this line of questioning? And most importantly, how should the viewer handle this dilemma?
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