Exhibition paying tribute to Ilya Kabakov at the Centre Pompidou, Paris
22 May 2024—10 March 2025
Centre Pompidou, Paris
The Centre Pompidou is organising an exhibition paying tribute to Ilya Kabakov (1933-2023) curated by Nicolas Liucci-Gounikov.
The exhibition presents Ilya and Emilia Kabakov's never-before-seen Two Times installation (2020) on the occasion of its donation to the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou. The installation forms a museographic display that evokes both a science museum and the polygonal apse of a church. The installation presents five large-format paintings that highlight Ilya Kabakov's 'pictorial collage' practice in the wake of Pop art. Tearing them up and gluing them together, Kabakov painted images ranging from ancient paintings to photos of a radiant future reproduced in Soviet reviews.
The Centre Pompidou will also show important works from its permanent collection, including documentation about Ilya and Emilia's groundbreaking mega installation We Are Living Here which was displayed at the museum in 1995. Spanning 1,800 m2, the total installation represented a large construction area for a 'Beautiful Palace of the Future'. Upon entering it, the viewer discovers that the site has been abandoned, shedding light on the reality of communism's utopian promises in the USSR.
On the occassion of the exhibition, the Centre Pompidou and Dilecta present an anthology of texts by Ilya Kabakov written between the beginning of the 1970s and 2019, published for the first time in French.
