I am about to start work on an installation to take place in March at St. Paul the Apostle. This is a huge church on 59th Street in New York City, and it will be a challenge to design and install my project in there. But this site is a good fit for the work, and has given me the chance to rediscover some of my favorite artists who create site-specific works. While researching last summer, I came across Ilya Kabakov and the School of Moscow Conceptualism (NOMA). Kabakov spent 30 years in the USSR as an 'unofficial' artist, until he became known in the West in the 80's. He and his collaborators came to alternative spaces and sites not by choice, but out of necessity, as they were deprived the opportunity to exhibit in art spaces or before large audiences. Kabakov and NOMA showed their works to each other in their homes – or alternatively, in unpopulated areas outside of Moscow. His installations speak about conditions in post-Stalinist Russia but are also about a more universal human condition. Although Kabakov eventually became a prominent artist in the West with his Total Installations, his beginnings and use of space were and are influential. And the content is connected to his past experiences- the majority of the installations he created represent or re-enact a type of home or apartment pervaded by an invisible guest.
Some project drawings from his installations.
In Ten Characters (1988), the ten characters are “The man who fled into his painting”, “The man who collects opinions of others”, “The man who flew out of his room into the space”, “The untalented artist”, “The little man”, “The composer”, “The collector”, “The man who describes his life through other characters”, “The man who saved Nikolai Viktorovich”, and “The man who never threw anything away”. All the characters appear in other installations, either solo or together with other characters in group installations. As any of Kabakov’s characters, these ten characters display a common feature; they all illustrates a type of dysfunction in relation to normal domesticity. This domestic dysfunction is expressed by “The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away”, which an apartment thus is filled with objects of no practical use or value.
