"The Center of Cosmic Energy," now installed at the Tufts University Art Gallery in Aidekman, is an artistic experiment. The exhibit, created by Ilya Kabakov, widely regarded as the most important living Soviet-era artist, and his wife, Emilia, is simultaneously puzzling and thought provoking, raising questions about the power of the cosmos and what humans can do to harness it.
It appears, at first, to be a disconcerting combination of pseudo-science, spirituality and conceptual art, and the intensity might initially drive some viewers away. However, it's an important exhibit, and full appreciation can only come from an understanding of where the artists and their philosophies have come from.
Kabakov trades hammer and sickle for brush
It makes sense that "The Center of Cosmic Energy" focuses on this vast external force as a source of strength, for where Kabakov comes from, there's no emphasis on the power of the individual. Soviet society effectively stamped individuality out of its people, evidenced in an examination of Kabakov's career and development as an artist.
Kabakov comes from a world that is completely foreign to the Western mind. The pervasive hopelessness in Kabakov's work and in his homeland is something that has rarely, if ever, been fully realized in America.
Kabakov's art grew out of his "official" work. His career began with a job producing illustrations in books and assorted graphic design projects. By gaining this formal status with the government, he was allowed to buy art supplies and subsequently permitted to delve into his "unofficial" work.
This all happened on Sretensky Boulevard, a street in central Moscow where a number of like-minded artists lived and worked. With the government's blessing, the artists worked officially by day, producing widely accepted book illustrations, while creating groundbreaking unofficial art behind closed doors. It was during his time spent with the Moscow Conceptualists (which grew out of the Sretensky Boulevard Group), that Kabakov came into his own, growing into the provocative artist he is today.
The invention of "total installation"
During that period, he made the major switch from small drawings to large-scale paintings. These eventually led to the even larger-scale installation pieces for which he's best known today.
Amy Schlegel, Director of the Galleries and Collections at the Tufts University Art Gallery, explained Kabakov's style: "Ilya Kabakov coined the term 'total installation.' Him and his wife, Emilia, have been collaborating since 1989. This genre - the total installation - calls for a kind of complete physical and psychological transformation of a space so that it is unrecognizable from what it had looked like before."
Kabakov's works have always been highly conceptual and very philosophical. He examines the human condition as experienced in the Soviet context. In his larger projects, Kabakov creates very real mise-en-sc?©nes filled with the most believable characters. He creates environments for his viewers to enter, resulting in experiments that combine visual art, literature and theater to convey a resonating message.
Connecting Moscow to Medford
It is, therefore, truly amazing to have such internationally acclaimed artists working in a space right on the Tufts Medford campus. Schlegel met the artists about 10 years ago.
"[It was] long before I was here at Tufts," Schlegel said. "They are artists I have known and worked with in much more modest capacities. About three years ago, shortly after I arrived at Tufts, I invited them to look at the space and consider creating a new installation that had never been realized before," she said.
"The Center of Cosmic Energy" was born out of this connection, and a long process began.
Schlegel said the installation's evolution was a "negotiation between the physical realities of our space and their vision, imagining bringing really what was just a set of drawings that existed as a series of prints into a kind of new reality as a fully three-dimensional space that people could pass through and sit inside of and experience."
Using past civilizations to create a functional Center
The process certainly paid off: the Gallery is now a completely transformed space.
"The Center of Cosmic Energy" welcomes the viewer into an informational atrium where certain pseudo-scientific facts and theorems are explained and illustrated. Kabakov's knack for storytelling and his background in illustration are apparent, manifested in a fantastic story about finding ancient artifacts beneath the Aidekman Art Center. The projected logo on the floor is flanked on either side by digital slide-shows on the walls. The images on the screen display various sacred sites around the world, which adhere to elaborate theorems explained on the walls.
These original theorems, penned by Kabakov, compose the most obscure aspect of the exhibit. They include the Intuition of 60 Degrees, The Intuition of Close Energy, the Intuition of the Throne and the Noosphere, a "state of existence" in which humankind and nature exist harmoniously.
These difficult concepts claim to reflect characteristics of the many ancient sites of spiritual and inexplicable events highlighted in the slide-shows. Ideas like that of the Noosphere embody the crux of The Center's philosophy: seeking to connect the energy of the present to that of the sacred sites of other times and places.
Conventional art gallery turned planetarium
The exhibit continues past the first atrium into a vast foyer where viewers wait to enter a lecture hall.
The hall feels like a planetarium, with its low lighting and theater in the round seating arrangement. Behind the scenes, the creation of The Center was "a long, very intensive three-month process, so that it could be structurally sound and meet all building codes," Schlegel said.
"And of course, the artists were involved every step of the way, in terms of the materials, the colors, the light levels, the sound levels - every single aesthetic decision you could imagine," she said.
Within the lecture hall, the finished, pristine look of the structure shows none of this construction.
"Their vision had to meet the cold reality of what's possible and impossible within the laws of physics," Shlegel said. "To get that cylinder to be erect at that 60 degree angle was very tricky."
Once seated within the hall, visitors are met, somewhat jarringly, with a deep, disembodied voice echoing around the room. So begins a less than stimulating aural experience, decidedly the weakest aspect of the exhibit.
The lecturing voice explicates everything written on the walls outside, adding more background information. Without any visual accompaniment, the lecture is difficult to focus on. In a way, it interrupts the meditative quality of the hall, and ultimately, the voice floats easily in one ear and out the other to hang like smoke in the dimly lit, thickly warm air in the cylindrical hall.
The sense of any cosmic connection suffers from the didactic nature of the script.
The source of "cosmic energy"
Viewers leave the lecture hall more disoriented than anything else, which makes for a shock when they enter the third part of the exhibit. Downstairs, an apparent archaeological dig site covers the floor.
If one managed to pick it up in the lecture, he'd know that the concept on which The Center is based is drawn from what's featured in the (fictional) dig site.
The sheer scale of the artifacts in the dig is the most impressive part of this stage. The floor is scattered with gravel and dust, with a wood plank walkway laid just over it. The walkway encircles the enormous artifacts that are the focus of the exhibit and the source of the supposed cosmic energy. They seem to be made out of some kind of clay or dirt and have a "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" feel, as visitors realize that the mysterious form that had been sitting in the center of the lecture hall where they were just sitting actually connects to this mushroom-like formation.
An eerie soundtrack of ambient noises echoes throughout the room, which gives the scene a science fiction, cinematic sense. Overall, the viewer can't help but find it an incredible feat that the white space of the Tufts Art Gallery could be transformed into such an unrecognizable site.
As the viewer leaves the dig, he's subjected to a visual assault of light, finding himself in the "debriefing room," equipped with a computer, short informational film and merchandise.
Plaques plaster the limited wall space in here. They outline the artist's history, a summary of the fictional story of The Center, Kabakov's previous works, and a multitude of other items that attempt to clarify - but also cause some confusion - about the goals of the installation and its relation to previous pieces.
Heavy questions shouldn't scare visitors away
The exhibit begs a return visit. Just a brief once-over can leave the viewer puzzled and disinterested due to the sheer amount of foreign information received. The philosophical implications of the desperate search for a cosmic savior are definitely heavy. A viewer who's not prepared to be bogged down by these kinds of questions could easily write this off as simply strange and unintelligible.
On the other hand, the exhibit certainly leaves viewers with the impression that the Kabakovs were trying to convey.
"The focus is not so much on the aesthetic objects, but more on the complete," Schlegel said. "Lighting and sound are crucial to creating the whole space. Of course, it's taken many twists and turns over the years, and there are over 100 installations that have been documented."
This genre may not be what immediately comes to mind when we think of conventional art exhibits, but the experience undoubtedly lingers in visitors' minds. Most art exhibits don't go beyond the aesthetic context, so it is rare to leave a gallery with an overwhelming feeling of existential angst or philosophical puzzlement.
The Center as a response to global issues
It's possible that the reason Kabakov's work is so out of the ordinary and unorthodox is that he poses a valid question; he raises important issues of an idealized humanity, and the connection between past and present human artifacts and experience. The Center of Cosmic Energy is about the source of strength and what will power the future of mankind. Kabakov may have meant this in the context of his oppressive Soviet upbringing, but it translates flawlessly into a global context.
Humanity is constantly searching for a new source of power, strength and energy. This even applies in the very literal sense, as in the search for renewable resources to fuel our lifestyle.
It also applies in the more figurative sense, where many are searching for the strength to believe in the goodness of mankind with the myriad humanitarian crises going on around the world. Kabakov has created this imaginary utopian solution in "The Center of Cosmic Energy."
The Center is a significant work, as the Kabakovs use their artistic skills and conceptual vision to put forth a hypothetical step towards change. This installation is more than art and more than philosophy.
Instead, it is art that looks toward change, and that's looking in the right direction.
