Leading Lights of the 20th Century. Karl Marx

"So much has been written about Marx that any spirit of criticism has been gradually lost. The result of this loss is that Marx continues to be little known", Bertolt Brecht

Karl Marx has certainly been one of the intellectual leading lights of the 20th century. Now, at the century's close, practically every power to have sallied forth under the standard of communism in the last 100 years is now dead. It would be presumptuous to venture what the next century may have to say about this period of history. One thing seems quite clear, however: in the 21st century, when people read Marx, they will be reading him as a classic.

This installation sets out to illustrate those aspects of Marx's body of work which, -isms apart, make him an intellectual leading light: the notion of surplus value, the idea of class struggle and his concept of socialism. Yet at the same time it aims to highlight the eminently critical nature of Marx's body of work.