Internationally renowned artists turn Tufts Art Gallery into The Center for Cosmic Energy

"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-scénes 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.