How to Meet an Angel, 2000.
The theme of angels runs through the entire culture of American postmodernism, beginning with the songs of Bob Dylan and up to the video installations of Bill Viola. However, in Ilya Kabakov's projects this theme stands out with particular vitality.
Meeting Angels
by Vitaly Patzukov
«Kabakov's thinking is similar to a pilgrim or a traveler in time and space. His matchless irony connects with deep personal experiences, skillfully using self-quotation and quotes from fundamental history, beginning with Jacob’s mystical stairs ascended by angels, and finishing with the images from the classical avant-garde, from Vladimir Tatlin's utopian flights and Konstantin Melnikov's metaphysics of 'staircase architecture' to the minimalism of Donald Judd.»
«In Kabakov's universe angels always appear from nowhere and unexpectedly, messengers from other dimensions. They float and soar over our world as reminders of another existence from an angel's perspective. Their extended wings bear testimony to man's lost or forgotten possibilities, which reside in the most ordinary texture of our being. Angels represent a perfect model of the human being who has overcome his corporeal confines to embrace the ecology of the heavenly space.»
source: tatintsian.com