FACE (Foundation of Arts for a Contemporary Europe) is a European interest group for the arts formed in 2008 and established by five private non-profit art foundations in five different countries: DESTE Foundation, Athens (Greece); Ellipse Foundation, Cascais (Portugal); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (Italy); La Maison rouge – Fondation Antoine de Galbert, Paris (France); and Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall (Sweden). Its first initiative is “Investigations of a Dog,” an exhibition that draws its title from a short story by Franz Kafka (1922) and successively presents 40 artworks from the partner foundations’ collections at the five foundations in 2009–2011. To accompany the exhibition, each foundation had commissioned an author to write a short story inspired by Kafka’s short story and the artworks of the exhibition.

This book reassembles a presentation of FACE, offers information about the exhibition and the different venues, as well as images and descriptions of the artworks. The five short stories commissioned from the authors Aristide Antonas, Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Rui Cardoso Martins, Emmanuelle Pagano, and Tiziano Scarpa, are translated into English.