146 MARCH 2016 EXHIBITION REVIEWS
ILYA AND EMILIA KABAKOV
PaceIlya Kabakov is a bad painter. Emilia, whose support for her
husband’s art has earned her equal billing for two decades, doesn’t
paint at all. But they keepilling galleries with paintings, as they
recently did at Pace, where they presented “he Two Times”
(2014-15) and “he Six Paintings about the Temporary Loss of
Eyesight” (2015)—two new series that are as bad as any they’ve
ever done. he palettes of these haphazardly representational
works are swampy and too brown. In one of the “Eyesight” paint-
ings theigures are outlined in red, which bleeds into the lighter
ground, making a mess. Fields of solid color are applied too
thickly, with strokes of uneven length and direction that the eye
stumbles over as it crosses the painting. To look at these works
and feel something other than disgust takes faith that art, even in
painting, lies beyond the surface.
While “bad painting” has been a deliberate practice for some
time, the cloying kitsch of these series is particularly hard to stomach.It helps to remember that, besides being a bad painter, Kabakov is a
philosopher of art and a student of the lives of artists. He’s an acute
psychologist who can conjure a compelling character with a few
deft sentences. He’s a draftsman with a keen sense of the dramatic
potential of negative space.hose aspects of Kabakov’s work were
presented in a side gallery at Pace;Mathematical Gorsky, from the
“Ten Characters” series of albums drawn in the early 1970s and pub-
lished in a limited edition in 1997, tells an elliptical tale about a man
who sees everything as numbers, even as his numerical imagination
is interrupted by images of things from the world.
Kabakov painted little after hisirst art school stint in
Moscow (1945-51), where he learned he had no facility for the
medium, so he later studied graphic design and worked as a book
illustrator. But in the 1980s, having turned largely to conceptualism
and installation, he took up painting again to make work from the
position of characters he created: untalented hacks, propaganda
painters, avant-garde visionaries who lacked the skill required
to realize their vision. One could argue that Kabakov’s approach
has entered the mainstream in the 21st century, as the art world’sthe paint, massed low in the renderings of trees and mountains,
and the weave of the canvas are faintly visible in these untitled
works. What the Empire did to Han Solo, so Braun has done to
the work of anonymous Sunday painters.
It’s remarkable, though hardly atypical, how quickly a criti-
cal orthodoxy has cemented around Braun’s work, despite the
fact that he is relatively young and has had only a handful of
solo exhibitions. Articles in bothFriezeandMoussehave noted
his modest or even humble aesthetic and commented on his
penchant for “collaborating” with natural forces, especially birds.
For Boesky East, Braun made a brick by compacting bird seed
and other organic materials and inserted it in the lintel over the
gallery entrance. Birds could peck away at the block, gradually
opening the gallery to the outside.he press release encour-
aged visitors to imagine how this process might blur various
boundaries—physical and conceptual. (he brick appeared fully
intact on the last week of the show’s run.)
his supposed collaborative spirit and understated aesthetic
were harder to recognize elsewhere. It was particularlydiicult to
understand the reliefs as anything but blunt assertions of a domi-
nant authorial presence, their subtlety masking an underlying gran-
diosity. Braun has repurposed thrift store paintings by entombing
them.his grim version of appropriation results in pictures that are
weighty in every sense. Braun’s reliefs suggest grand themes (nature
and culture; life and, especially, death) while nodding to major
traditions: modernist painting, abstraction, the monochrome.
But what is in a nod? he reliefs look like some of Alberto
Burri’s monochromes. he egg cartonloor pieces resemble
the coniguration of irebrick works by Carl Andre. But why?
What are these references doing? Are Braun’s fussy, fragile
productions meant somehow to be a joke on the rawness and
impermanence of Andre’s art? Such imprecise yet unmistakable
citations of established masterpieces convey only an appeal to
authority and further pull away the alreadylimsy mask that
they are modest or simple objects.
he existence of that mask at all is what’s irritating here. It’s
the only thing separating Braun from the larded-up grandilo-
quence of Daniel Arsham or Loris Gréaud, artists who are expert
at conjuring meagerefects from extravagant production budgets.
he found-object-esque look is so obviously a red herring that
the satisfaction one gets in learning the truth is totallysuperi-
cial.he whole situation at Boesky East, despite the specter of
ornithological chaos, felt controlled, carefully staged to amuse
those with only minimal curiosity, people who might be putof
toind egg cartons and monochromes presented as art. Fortu-
nately for them, we don’t have to wait long for the big reveal to
hit.he earthy smell of the nests was theirst clue that the artist’s
wit, knowledge of canonical art history and admirable hard work
would be on full display.
he clever and concise backstories hold the line and guide us
toward familiar conventions. It’s TED Talk conceptualism with
a great elevator pitch. Not a single neuron in the viewer’s brain
could be wasted on dalliances or reveries. “Nothing is ever wasted.”
Indeed, these hand-crafted artisanal forms lead, with streamlined
eiciency, to mechanistic forms of thought.
—William S. SmithIlya and Emilia
Kabakov:The Two
Times #7,2014,oil
oncanvas,75by112
inches; at Pace.