(born in Dnjepropetrovsk, Ukraine in 1933 or. 1945)
How can one change oneself? - How to become an angel?, 1997, from: Palast der Projekte, signed, dated, titled, inscribed on the reverse kyrillic I. Kabakov 1997, leather, feather-wings, sheets, mounted on painted wooden plate with white painted wooden frame, no. 5 from 10 examples, 110 x 143 x 17 cm, in plexiglass box (111 x 143.5 x 23.5 cm)

We are grateful to Dr. Olga Sugrobova-Roth for her scientific advice in cataloguing the work.

Provenance:
Galerie Clara Maria Sels, Düsseldorf
Private Collection North Rhine-Westphalia - acquired from the above in 1999

Exhibited/Literature:
Zollverein Essen - Kokerei, since 2001, The palace of projects (another example exhibited and illustrated)
The work is part of the permanent installation, exhib. cat. no. 1.3 with colour ill. exhibit. cat. Essen 2001, no. 1.3 (without page/ 2 full page colour ill.)

Kabakov is subtly ironic and yet serious at the same time. He himself described his work as a field of dynamic art in which there is no separation between art and text, text and conversation, conversation and poetic pastime.

In an interview with the Moscow magazine Art-Chronicle, Kabakov said that his artistic consciousness, formed in the USSR of the 1970s, did not allow for contact with everyday life. Art connected with reality, however it was not the reality of everyday life, but of the artist‘s workshop. The model of the artist‘s workshop guaranteed the artist his sublimity, his other-worldliness.

The Soviet concept of human history, which was solely the account of heroes and their rise, not the history of processes, also influenced this development of consciousness. Thus the thought emerged: either you are a hero or you are finished.

„... I think that today‘s situation echoes the deformed psyche of the 1970s.[...] Perhaps it is necessary for a group of artists to express themselves so that they only engage with art. But not participate in life in any way. To finally decide that [everyday] life is not for me.“

Art-Chronicle, Moscow, May 2010