Installation artists often work with video, either using the video monitor itself as visible part of their work or projecting video imagery onto walls, screens or other surfaces. A pioneer video artist is the Korean-born, New York-based Nam June Paik, who proclaimed that just “as collage technique replaced oil paint, the cathode ray tube will replace the canvas”.
Ilya Kabakov was born in 1933 in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine and has a background of studies in art, painting, sculpture, architecture and graphic art. It was in the beginning of the 1950’s that Kabakov finished his studies and began to do illustrations for children’s books but also personal drawings.
Turning point when meeting Robert falk wo painted in a style of “cezannism”.
From painting and drawing Ilya Kabakov’s work became more and more conceptual; during the 1970’s. This was new to the art scene in Soviet and quite revolutionary coming from the free art scene in Paris. The conceptual ideas that Kabakov had was developed in to a group, including his friends and colleagues, they got the name “Moscow Conceptualists”. Together they experimented with the construction of Russian conceptual art.
Today Ilya Kabakov is living and working in Long Island, New York and is known worldwide as an installation artist. Before his first installation he created fictional albums, of which he created a total of 50 pieces. His fictional albums were stories about a character who most of the time managed to overcome the banality of everyday existence, for example “a small man, possessed by big ideas”. In this work, which is called “Ten Characters”, Ilya Kabakov show ten stories of different men, about their life, thoughts about their life and what they had done with it. The ten different characters explains Ilya Kabakov’s perception of the world and this work was shown by illustrations which was almost childlike in their style together with text that had a deeper more serious tone and almost cynical meaning. Ilya Kabakov has explained that he treat these fictional albums as a type of domestic theatre.
The Unhung Painting, 1992
The concept:
The concept for The Unhung Painting installation lays in the problem of something being “ready” – “not ready” and the phase where that is determined. In comparison to everyday life where we can easily see if a table is ready or not ready because it is still being put together, or if the main course is ready in the way it’s cooked or if it needs some more time, it is not as easy to determine that in the so-called art of the modern. In old paintings from let’s say the renaissance the completion was already set before the artist made the first brush stroke. The final product was clear from the start. In the days of Impressionists or of Henri Matisse and the Fauvism, the perception of a ready/finished painting was not as clear any longer. The borders between the finished and the unfinished got even more blurred out in the movement of Fluxus.
There can be two genres in Installation art one being the “total installation”, which includes elements of ordinary as everyday reality, the other genre is “open installation” where the border between this real space and the “artistic” space is infinite. So within total installation this uncertainty of borders definitely creates a problem of the ready not ready term. But what if one appreciated the effect of anticipation of the process instead of concentration on the problem of not to be ready.
Ilya kabakov takes his idea of this problem and express it through the construction of a “not ready “, installation. There is also a reference in the concept coming from Kabakov’s experiences of Soviet, where one can find many examples of buildings that have been under construction so long that they start to fall apart before it is finished. When living in surroundings like that, it is more likely that becomes your reality, the “not ready” is the normal.
The problem of art being ready or not ready could also be pointed out for the whole perception of what is and what isn’t art today. This put the viewer in a tricky position as well in the terms of seeing something that one can be certain of is a finished work of art, or if the experience if it is clear that the work isn’t finished. Would that bring a disappointment to the experience or could it possible increase the interest since one would actually see the work in progress? The later could transfer the thoughts to Performance Art where artists invited an audience to see the work in progress.
Description of the installation:
In a room at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne where the wooden floor is painted red and the walls are damp and boring looking as those of a basement, there is a large painting leaning towards the wall. Even though this does not at all seem like a place for any painting to be placed. The room is only lit up by two bare light bulbs which puts the room in a semi-darkness. The other three walls in the square room are covered with commentaries of people’s opinions about the painting, whether it is going to be hung to the wall or just about what they think is going on in the room. This forms a row of textual sketches placed, each and every one of them in a frame.
On the floor around the large painting there are instruments for the job scattered around, a hammer, pliers and screws. There is also a stepladder next to the painting. An obvious response to this scene would be that the painting was meant to be hung up but something came in between, maybe it was lunchtime and the people responsible took a break? Even if that was not the case, the “normal” reaction for the viewer would be that this space was undone, a concern about someone not fulfilling their duty or a feeling of not being certain of what is actually happening or what is supposed to happen.
Is the painting being hung up on the wall or is it being removed from the wall and the room? The painting itself becomes second in importance. The resemblance of the painting is a mass of details, houses and trees, carefully and well drawn which implies that it is not really a modern painting that will be appreciated as groundbreaking of any kind. When the concentration is focused upon the painting one will notice the written text on the bottom half of it.
I can’t tell if it is a story, a sort of article or just someone’s words about different places and persons.
The viewer takes all this in and questions the comments on the walls, why this room is a closed space with a door that blends in with the colour of the walls and the circumstances around the painting. Maybe there is an answer hidden in there somewhere but I believe that Ilya Kabakov intended to give the viewer an opportunity to stop and think of the present while it is happening instead of just rushing from A to B, from not ready to ready, whether it is a good or bad thing.
