Ilya & Emilia Kabakov – Galleria Continua
Among the new exhibitions at the San Gimignano branch of Galleria Continua, there is The Eminent Direction of Thoughts, by the internationally acclaimed artistic duo, Ilya & Emilia Kabakov.
At the heart of the Kabakovs’ works lies a subtle interrelation of visual and verbal elements. Objects and images associated with everyday life are interwoven with personal experiences against a backdrop of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union and the living conditions of post-Stalinist Russia, culminating in what is ultimately an analysis of the universal condition of man, where the more dramatic aspects of existence are mediated by the filter of irony.
A chair is placed in the middle of a dark room, closer to one of the walls. The strings of different colors, connected to this chair, are stretched toward the ceiling of the room, like “thoughts” coming from the “invisible” person, who is sitting on this chair. The bare, transparent light bulb is hanging from the ceiling. The room reminds us either of a jail cell or a monk’s room, where a person spends his time contemplating life, death, religion. Such is the installation by the Ukrainian duo that has been active since the late 60’s.
Ilya Kabakov (Ukraine, Dnipropetrovs’k, 1933) and Emilia Kabakov (Ukraine, Dnipropetrovs’k, 1945) live and work on Long Island, New York. Their works are to be found among the permanent collections of prestigious museums, including the Pompidou Centre, MoMA, the Kunsthalle in Bern, and the TATE in London.
