Ilya Kabakov He Lost His Mind

He Lost His Mind, Undressed, Ran Away Naked consists of three installations, the first of which is a labyrinth. The dim hallways are decorated with memoirs of Soviet provincial life and old family nostalgia.

The second and third installations strongly contrast with the first. The rooms are spacious and well-lit and are decorated with colorful, optimistic murals of modern Soviet life. Over the murals hang paintings which are in disarray. The subject matter of the paintings varies from realistic imagery to bureaucratic charts and graphs. Articles of clothing hang on the paintings and the floor is littered with garbage and detritus. Barriers separate the viewer from the murals and paintings.

The riddle of the installation is answered in the texts which lie on tables in front of barriers.

Since Ten Characters, his first exhibition at the Feldman Gallery in 1988, Kabakov has had solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the Kunsthalle in Zurich, The Genia Schreiber Gallery at Tel Aviv University, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. He was included in Magiciens de la Terre at the Musee National d?Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. The Fred Hoffman Gallery in Santa Monica, California will host The Rope of Life and Other Installations from January 13 – Feb. 10.

Kabakov was recently awarded the Ludwig Prize and will have a retrospective at the Ludwig Museum in Koln in the Fall of 1990. The Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. will exhibit Selections from Ten Characters in March 1990. He lives in Moscow and has been in Berlin on DAAD Fellowship.

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Ilya Kabakov "He Lost His Mind, Undressed, Ran Away Naked"