List of art installations by Ilya Kabakov

A text describes the story as narrated by three of the other residents, one of whom happened to know the cosmonaut better than the others yet admits, “I didn’t know him well.” The room still contains the contraption, a gaping hole in the ceiling, and scientific drawings and diagrams tacked to a wall that is covered with wallpaper composed of old Soviet propaganda posters.

Each canvas is divided in half horizontally and depicts various scenes, including a soccer match, a drawing class in an art academy, a group of workers, and three views of the countryside with assorted landmarks or industrial settings.

The narrative suggests the works are “a dreadful mixture of hack-work, simple lack of skill.” Another character, The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away collects and treasures ordinary and discarded items.

Entering a large gallery with a high ceiling, the viewer finds an unfinished wooden ramp and a series of ladders and platforms.

Moving past the unpainted wooden construction, the viewer enters what might appear to an American to be a trailer home but which is modeled on a Russian wagon, which at one time could have been used as a railroad car.

Music emanates from the wagon's darkened interior, and, upon crossing the threshold, the viewer finds a mural depicting an idyllic Soviet city, peaceful, harmonious, and prosperous, with a blue sky filled not with clouds but apparently with an airshow of biplanes, hot-air balloons, and zeppelins.

At the rear of the wagon a final door takes the viewer to a room strewn with piles of garbage, but, unlike most of Kabakov's other installations, a narrative is not offered to clarify the setting.

The room, however, was filled with furniture and appeared to have been used as a living space with a bed, crib, dresser, nightstand and a table that looks as if it were in the midst of being set for dinner.

Mimicking the building's structure and perfectly placed within a central ring of columns is a smaller enclosure in the shape of a spiral, glowing from within and illuminating the otherwise dim interior of the Roundhouse.

The text provided states, “the installation displays and examines a seemingly commonly known and even trivial truth: the world consists of a multitude of projects, realized ones, half-realized ones, and ones not realized at all.” Thus, despite the immediate reference to the Soviet Union's utopian project, the viewer is told that this installation refers to the entire world.

A red plastic woman's glove is attached to the ground and around it is placed a semicircle of nine metal music stands, each engraved with a text from a different imaginary character and written in poetic form.

In a text separate from, but pertaining to, the public project, Kabakov explains his focus of attention for Monument to a Lost Glove.

We had come here (to the park) to escape but, with his tender irony, Kabakov had reconnected us with the pains and the neglected pleasures of reality.” The Artist’s Despair, or the Conspiracy of the Untalented of 1994 tells the story of an exhibition.

A gallery is decorated with an exhibition of modern art, specifically small black-and-white photographs surrounded by white mats and black frames.

The frames are cut off by the ceiling, as are two pairs of giant legs garbed in 19th century attire, the only visible portions of the oversized exhibition.

Kabakov's In the Closet of 2000 was another installation shown at the Venice Biennale in the Utopia Station pavilion, a group show without allegiance to any country, composed of a diverse collection of artworks.

The diminutive installation does not offer text to further explain the closet, but the concept behind the group show, utopia, informs the viewer what is being addressed.