Ilya & Emilia Kabakov
22 Jun - 02 Sep 2012
ILYA & EMILIA KABAKOV
The Happiest Man
Curated by Chiara Bertola
22 June – 2 September 2012
Ilya Kabakov, born in the ex-Soviet Union in 1933, is considered the father of Russian Conceptualism. From the very beginning, his language focused on analysing the social condition of the individual during the post-Stalinist period in the Soviet Union. The art of Kabakov – who works with his wife Emilia – has a powerful utopian charge in which escaping into art and the imagination is viewed as possible redemption from the quotidian.
The most frequent form of expression used by the Kabakovs is the “total installation”, with elements from architecture, painting, film and stage design. It is a separate space within the exhibition area, where the spectator is separately immersed through audiovisual and environmental references in order to experience the Soviet milieu in which the artists lived.
The Happiest Man is a large “total installation” created in 2000, and it will be presented as a site-specific version at HangarBicocca. The work represents the home of “the happiest man”, who through his window sees the landscape – in perpetual motion – of the films projected on the screen. It is thus an ironic and poignant metaphor for the search for an escape from reality that characterized the century we just left behind.
The Happiest Man
Curated by Chiara Bertola
22 June – 2 September 2012
Ilya Kabakov, born in the ex-Soviet Union in 1933, is considered the father of Russian Conceptualism. From the very beginning, his language focused on analysing the social condition of the individual during the post-Stalinist period in the Soviet Union. The art of Kabakov – who works with his wife Emilia – has a powerful utopian charge in which escaping into art and the imagination is viewed as possible redemption from the quotidian.
The most frequent form of expression used by the Kabakovs is the “total installation”, with elements from architecture, painting, film and stage design. It is a separate space within the exhibition area, where the spectator is separately immersed through audiovisual and environmental references in order to experience the Soviet milieu in which the artists lived.
The Happiest Man is a large “total installation” created in 2000, and it will be presented as a site-specific version at HangarBicocca. The work represents the home of “the happiest man”, who through his window sees the landscape – in perpetual motion – of the films projected on the screen. It is thus an ironic and poignant metaphor for the search for an escape from reality that characterized the century we just left behind.