[ART] KABAKOV, Ilya

A Universal System for Depicting Everything [Universalsystem zur Darstellung von allem]

Dusseldorf: Richter Verlag, 2002. First Edition. Small Folio. 34cm. Publisher's dark grey cloth titled in light grey to spine and front board, with printed illustration laid on to the cloth of the front board. 213pp. [1]. Some light sunning to the cloth in places, minor scuffing and bumping to extremities; internally clean and fresh, grey endpapers, signed by the artist to the title page. A very good, strong copy.

Published to accompany Kabakov's 2002 exhibition of the same title at the Kunsthalle Goppingen, "A Universal System..." is an ambitious and delirium inducing attempt to synthesize an artistic view of the human condition from the perspective of an artists witnessing it from an alternate dimension.
Simultaneously an experiment in creating a series of mostly incomprehensible pieces that only begin to make sense as the viewer begins to understand their origin, and a mechanism for creating a kind of sudden vertiginous switching of perspective in the viewer. The initial effect is confusion, leading to the disconcerting understanding that something very important has been discovered, but not in a way that we can immediately understand. Text in German and English. Kabakov is a Russian American artist, known for collaborating with his wife Emilia on large installations, often dealing with the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, and themes of flawed perception. Signed Kabakov material is thin on the ground in trade.

Price: $175.00

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