Projects for Colle Val d'Elsa, Ilya Kabakov, 1998

“When Mario proposed, for the third edition of ‘Arte all’Arte,’ to install works by Ilya Kabakov, I must admit I was a bit surprised. I knew Kabakov only as one of the most prominent artists of our time, but my knowledge didn’t go much beyond a few photos of some of his works. I couldn’t see the connection—at least not with Colle di Val d’Elsa. Then the trio—Mario, Lorenzo, and Maurizio—presented the project to me: the idea of connecting different historical periods through three key reference points—classical antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the contemporary era. The first is represented by a yellow marble column from the Montagnola Senese, topped with an open book whose text refers to the cult of ruins. The second, visible through a telescope installed in the evocative setting of Via delle Romite, depicts a lit window with two human figures and two angels. The third, a metaphor for the tragicomic events of the present, is a plexiglass panel upon which a swarm of flies forms the phrase: ‘we are free.’ Thus, the skillful placement of these works throughout the historic center of Colle shows how successive layers of modernity can be represented in art through pure and simple mental creation. Art that reveals the artist and his extraordinary humanity—a humanity as transparent as the crystal of my homeland.

— Marco Spinelli, Mayor of Colle di Val d’Elsa, excerpt from the catalogue Arte All’Arte III, 1998

Art Exhibitions

Talks

Ilya Kabakov intervened in three different locations in Colle Val d’Elsa for the third edition of Arte all’Arte, by invitation and under the curatorship of Florian Matzner and Angela Vettese: in front of the Bastione di Sapia, inside a bar, and in a garden, where the visitor encounters three different yet equally evocative perspectives on a world suspended between past and present, between sky and earth.

“…contemporary art still represents a strong sign, and precisely in a historically connoted space, by establishing a fruitful connection between past and present, it is able to develop not only aesthetic but also social perspectives for the future. This latter aspect is particularly clear in the three-part installation by Ilya Kabakov in Colle di Val d’Elsa. The first part of the story that the artist tells us takes place in antiquity, physically located in a ‘no place’ outside the city walls; the second part recounts the period in which those Tuscan municipalities were formed that still today, intact, shape the image of this cultural landscape. The last chapter of the story, instead, unfolds in a bar, on the interior wall of which hundreds of flies form the phrase “Noi siamo libere!” Kabakov dedicated an entire solo exhibition to the motif of flies – La vita delle mosche, 1992 at the Kunstverein in Cologne – and he himself wrote in his project description for Arte all’Arte that the third project Noi siamo libere! is associated with the current situation, indeed – as Boris Groys said – “the fly by its nature has no fixed place in any system. It continuously flies in circles, buzzes, lands and immediately flies off again. The circles it draws in the air are always chaotic. The place where it lands on the surface of objects is always random.” The fly is the metaphor for the propensity and the right (of art) to freedom.”

Florian Matzner, Arte all’Arte III, 1998

Credits

Ilya Kabakov
La voce che si indebolisce,1998
Marmo giallo di Siena, cm h115, ø cm 56
Installazione permanente
Bastione della Sapia
Progetto per Arte all’Arte III a Colle di Val d’Elsa
Foto Attilio Maranzano
© Associazione Arte Continua

Ilya Kabakov
Noi siamo libere!,1998
mosche di plastica, cm 185×220,
installazione nel Bar di Piazza Canonica
Progetto per Arte all’Arte III a Colle di Val d’Elsa
Foto Ela Bialkowska
© Associazione Arte Continua

Ilya Kabakov
La finestra illuminata, 1998
Materiali vari, dimensioni variabili, particolare
Progetto per Arte all’Arte III a Colle di Val d’Elsa
Foto Ela Bialkowska
© Associazione Arte Continua