The Children's Corner
YEAR: 1988
CATALOGUE NUMBER: 22
PROVENANCE
Version 1
Collection John L. Stewart, New York.
Version 2
Collection of the artist.
EXHIBITIONS
Ten Characters, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, 30 April – 4 June 1988 (as part of No 15, Ten Characters).
Ilya Kabakov. The Untalented Artist and Other Characters at the ICA London, Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 23 February – 23 April 1989 (as part of No 15, Ten Characters).
See installation “Ten Characters,” Cat No 15.
Version 2
Trans/Mission – Konst i Interkulturell Limbo, Rooseum, Center for Contemporary Art, Malmö, 27 August – 27 October 1991 (as part of No 50, The Mental Institution or the Institute of Creative Research, Room 12).
DESCRIPTION
The Children’s Corner belongs to the type of ‘small installation in the corner.’ The installation consists of an old, crumpled ‘wretched’ mattress (not a large normal mattress, but rather a shortened one for children) and 9 pages with drawings that are small (25 x 18 cm) that have been carelessly nailed in two rows at a short distance above this mattress. The impression is created that whoever sits and plays on this mattress has hung up these drawings for himself in this corner to be able to see them all the time right next to him, to study them, and he used them to ‘decorate’ his ‘corner.’
The drawings are the originals of illustrations for children’s books with small, little pyramids of colored paper crumpled into little balls glued on the sketched surfaces. They are glued to the drawings in 5-6 rows. In the center of each drawing, in addition to these little balls, some sort of object is added: a small box, a lid from a small bottle. All of this creates a funny, but at the same time, an impoverished, pitiful impression.
Literature
