next exhibition： current exhibition： Ilya Kabakov’s Album Theater “Sitting-in-the-Closet Primakov” Ilya Kabakov   May. 28, Friday – July. 3, Saturday, 2004 Closed on Mon., Sun. and National holidays We would like to announce you a solo show by Ilya Kabakov at SHUGOARTS. Kabakov was born in Dnepropetrovsk (Ukraine) under former Soviet Union, and now lives and works in New York. Pre-Perestroika days in Moscow. It was the time that no other art works but socialistic realism was authorized by the government, Kabakov lived officially as a picture book illustrator, and behind the scene, he also had another face as a contemporary artist who is considered as a father of Soviet Conceptualism. During the period of his early days in '70s, he created a series of art works called "Album", which was made as a picture card show style, and he once in a while performed it for his artist friends at his studio. After late '80s, he started having shows in Western countries and his name became well-known in worldwide, he exhibited this series as "Album - Ten Characters". There are stories that each ten characteristic people, who might be the artist's alter ego, becomes a main character. Those narratives have two aspects that reflects atmosphere of illogicalness at the time of creation in Moscow, and also universality that is still in common with for all human beings, and are composed with distinctive story lines and a lot of drawings. One of the albums is a story about a man who started living in a closet of his house, and finally disappears from there. This story, "Sitting-in-the-Closet Primakov" was released under the editorship and recite performance of the artist in 1999 as CD-ROM. It was a new challenge for the artist to reproduce the piece with CG, as he focused on a picture card show style that values timing on switching picture cards. He says - As a child, I sat in a closet for half a year, where no one could disturb me. I could imagine what was going on in the room from the sounds coming through the wall. Sitting there, I imagine to myself that I was flying out of the closet and rising up over the city and over the entire earth, and disappearing in to the sky… I would sit there so long that when I open the door I couldn’t see anything in the blinding light.. --- from " Sitting-in-the-Closet Primakov " For this exhibition, a big projection will be made on a gallery wall, and play recorded reading in Russian performed by the artist, and in Japanese by a Japanese actor. With the rhythm of the text and images that are played more accurately, you will experience the time and space that is reminiscence of the reading performance that the artist used to perform. Please visit our space, and experience this artwork that might be a point of origin of this artist who keeps working on big scale installations. Kabakov's ceramic editions back to exhibitions Copyright 2003 SHUGOARTS. All rights reserved. contact: SHUGOARTS info@shugoarts.com SHUGOARTS website since2003 designed by Kaori Hoya, Created by Kaneko Osamu