"Special cases" is a collection of essays on significant works of art created over the past century and their authors, who have inspired Groys to new discoveries and interpretations. The book is inspired by art as a practice that changes perspective and thinking.

Boris Groys writes about the works of Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Fischli and Weiss, Rebecca Horn, and others. "Private Cases" explores key questions related to the development of contemporary art: originality, secondary nature, the value of artworks, the language of power embedded in them, and more.

The essays do not explain art theory but rather follow the impulses given by the works themselves.