Ilya Kabakov

Lia Rumma, Naples
through February 28

With The sick child Ilya Kabakov does more than recreate a place, he recreates an atmosphere. Despite the emptiness of the installation’s spaces, the visitor senses a human presence evoked by a series of clues hinting at a temporary absence. Wandering through the three rooms of this apartment—devised specifically for the show—the spectator feels thrown into a foreign world, into somebody else’s life of which he knows no detail.

As soon as we pass through the doorway that divides the apartment from the rest of the gallery, the silence is broken by the incessant ticking of a wall clock whose hands, despite the passing of time, stand still. We find ourselves in a kitchen where it seems time has been frozen. We can see a pan sitting on the electric ring, a vase and jug close by, on the wall there’s an old hanging, some small pictures, and postcards.

The second room is a narrow, middle-class dining room with a table set ready for two and a threadbare two piece suite, a glass fronted sideboard full of old household goods, and a nondescript lamp which dimly lights the room. A white curtain divides the third room in two, concealing a metal-framed bed with a pillow and duvet on top. Next to the bed we find a chair and the nerve center of the entire installation: a tiny theatre lit from the inside and brought to life by puppets dancing to the sound of soft background music. For the “sick child” of the piece’s title, and the viewer, this puppet show marks the presence of two unwanted visitors: “the repugnant George and his friend Coco.”

The interiors of Soviet homes are reiterated in another work on exhibition; a canvas which takes its inspiration from the war waged against the infestation of flies by the residents of various council apartment blocks where, even today, families have to share kitchens and bathrooms with their neighbors. In the blue canvas our attention is centered on a life-sized fly and a cut and thrust sparring match between two Soviets portrayed by Kabakov in the two top corners: “who does this fly belong to?” “I don’t know”. In the installation entitled How to meet an angel, a man, after eventually freeing himself from the weights and ties strewn along a twisting staircase, is finally ready to entrust himself to the arms of an angel.




Francesco Galdieri