The Unfinished Paintings of Charles Rosenthal
伊利亚/艾米莉亚·卡巴科夫, The Unfinished Paintings of Charles Rosenthal
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Wijnegem
Pictures of the exhibition
伊利亚/艾米莉亚·卡巴科夫, The Unfinished Paintings of Charles Rosenthal
由 →
Wijnegem
Story of the exhibition
Axel Vervoordt Gallery is delighted to present the complete cycle of paintings created in 1999 showing the room installation of white constructions, which are elements from last proposed unfinished exhibition by his avatar and invented character Charles Rosenthal. Conceived as part of the large body of works within the oeuvre THE ALTERNATIVE HISTORY OF ART – THE UNFINISHED PAINTINGS OF CHARLES ROSENTHAL/ ROOM No.6 is part of a collected invented, revisionist history given to us as a way of reading Kabakovs’ complex imagination that rewrote art history from the end of the last century through to the end of Stalin, as a parable.
I decided to make a large group of paintings and arrange them together as a unified whole… I don’t know whether I’ll manage to find an appropriate dwelling for such an arrangement that I have conceived. The materials that I gathered for such an integrated exhibit, the first of its kind, are ready, and I think everything will be finished by the spring of next year.
Ilya Kabakov decides that Charles Rosenthal would have to be killed prematurely in a car accident before finishing these works. It is 1933, the year of his own actual birth. But he shows them anyway — that is Ilya Kabakov the real artist decides to present them. For this reason, they become a clue to the big questions Ilya was pondering at that time, via the fictional character of Rosenthal. Keep in mind that Kabakov’s day job in Moscow during his career pre-1986 was illustrating children’s books. We know that characters in children’s books are used to make reality seemingly understandable to the young, when in fact we certainly all know as adults that life is rarely so.
The artist seems to want to reassure us, maybe in the same way Malevich put his famous Black Square in the corner high in the drawing room wall where everyone at the time expected to see the icon painting of Christ. Instead of Christ, there was the Black Square. Here, too, Kabakov offers the white canvas like a monochrome daring us to look differently at something we think we know. This powerful and brilliant, austere and musical body of complete work has only been shown three times: first, in 1999, at the Mito Museum in Mito, Japan; secondly, in 2004, in Cleveland, USA when The Alternative History of Art took over the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. In 2008, the Alternative History of Art was shown in its entirety at The Garage, Moscow. The installation has been shown partially at the Städel Museum Frankfurt am Main, and at Kunstmuseum Bern, both in 2000.
This exhibition at Kanaal is the first time a European audience will have the opportunity to experience the complete iconic installation of works, a series of triptychs and individual paintings by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov.
Jill Silverman van Coenegrachts, curator