The attribution of the works to others may relate to Ilya’s experience in the old Russia of having to distance himself from his production as an unofficial artist. These days he is more interested in creating under his own name. Among the pieces in his studio are a few from the “Under the Snow” series, 2004–06, in which scenes of everyday life and people’s faces are painted on white fields so that the viewer seems to peer at them through openings in a blanket of snow. Some of these were on view at Art Basel last June at the booth of the Paris and Salzburg dealer Thaddaeus Ropac, and others can be seen through February 2009 at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, in Spain. Ropac, who has represented the Kabakovs since 1995—they are represented in New York by the Sean Kelly Gallery and also work with the Deweer Art Gallery, in Otegem, Belgium, and Sprovieri Progetti, in London—is currently featuring two newer series, “The Canon” and “Broken Glass,” at his Salzburg branch through September 27. “[Ilya] has dived back into painting with renewed vigor,” says Jill Silverman van Coenegrachts, a director of the Ropac gallery in Paris. “He’s revealing himself without the theatrical embellishments of the personages. He has become comfortable enough to do that.”

The 12 paintings in the “Gates” series are moody depictions in varying light of gates that resemble the Golden Gate of Kiev, an 11th-century stone archway providing entrée into the Ukrainian capital. Speaking perhaps with an ironic awareness that he himself is a late-career artist, Ilya explains that the pictures are meant to appear to be “the final work of an artist—as in, you read the biography and you get to the last work, and it is very pompous, pessimistic, philosophical, important.”

The conversation turns to the Soviet era. “To show anything connected to the past right now is difficult—it is either too close or too far away,” says Emilia. “Today many Russians live the same kind of life they did then, in the same crowded apartments, with the same difficulties. On the other hand, for people who have moved up and now live a different kind of life, there is a nostalgia for Soviet times.” Ilya nods.

The Kabakovs are thinking of the past as they prepare to show in Moscow some of their most famous works, created and originally displayed in the West and all but unknown to a Russian audience. Things are different in today’s Moscow, which has become not just an artistic center but a market hub. The Kabakovs remark on such changes only obliquely, referring to the extreme car traffic as evidence of the city’s heightened energy. What of the fact that many Russian artists are actually able to sell their creations there? The market, Ilya posits, “is the new ideology,” and the work of today’s underground artists does not cater to it. The indirectness of his responses may spring from the strangeness of going back to a place where he once had to exhibit clandestinely and where now cutting-edge contemporary art is made, shown and sold openly. When asked about his own next project, Ilya pauses and shrugs. “That’s a tough question, because every work is spontaneous,” he muses. “I go into the shower, and I get an idea. I never know what the next one will be.” 

"Kabakov and Kabakov" originally appeared in the September 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's September 2008 Table of Contents.