The Palace of Projects. Alicia Chillida.

The exhibition consists of a large installation that examines an apparent and commonly known truth, even a trivial one: the world consists of a multitude of projects, some realized, others half realized and others not realized at all. All this constitutes a world of projects without limit.

This installation, one of the artist's most ambitious projects, is the product of three years of work (1995-98) and is articulated around a light wooden structure, the interior of which is organized into successive rooms, tracing a spiral that ascends to a second floor. The viewer walks through the exhibition, passing from one to another. The projects, a total of 65, are grouped into three main themes: projects related to improving the lives of others; projects that stimulate creativity; projects aimed at improving oneself as an individual.

Each room is dedicated to a more or less imaginary character developed by Kabakov, each project is represented by a model next to which there is a small table and a chair; on the table there is a description and a commentary on each idea. After taking a seat at the table, the visitor can unhurriedly familiarize himself with the essence of the project, so that by moving from one project to another, sitting in the specially illuminated atmosphere that prevails inside the Palace, he can have a full experience of the idea.

The initial focus of The project palace, a mental model of the universe is Paxton's Crystal Palace, 1851, a monument to constructive optimism, progress, science and hope for the future, whose architecture and spirit the Crystal Palace of Buen Retiro is indebted to. Other antecedents can be found in the Tower of Babel or in the Monument to the Third International by Vladimir Tatlin.

For Juan Antonio Ramirez "to reduce Kabakov's work to a crude anti-Soviet pamphlet is to seriously misinterpret the work of a subtle and complex creator, whose ironic tenderness is oriented towards humanity as a whole in its desperate attempt to achieve harmony and happiness". (...) "One of his most emblematic 'sculptures' was Looking up. Reading the words (Munster, 1997). "In it it was very well perceived that Kabakov's basic drive is the romantic desire to find himself, and to improve, as far as possible, the condition of the human being. This character is a vehement and candorous utopian, and that is what most reveals, paradoxically, his intimate fidelity to the Soviet system of values (...) It does not seem strange to me, finally, that he ended up conceiving a kind of summa of his entire oeuvre and that it was displayed in a complex architectural installation, in the manner of an imaginary museum: this is precisely what the Palace of Projects".

In "The Ambition of Paradise. Art as method" , the lecture by architect, urban planner and poet, Beatriz Blanco, talked about five of Kabakov's projects, chosen among the 65 that make up his exhibition. Focusing on the last of them, called "Paradise under the roof", she began to talk about paradise with some graphic and legendary descriptions, the Earthly Paradise, not the Paradise of the afterlife offered by the different religions to the good beyond death, therefore, Paradise for the living, not for the dead, to then comment on aspects of Paradise that in her opinion are collected in the city, relating the locations of the earthly paradise with those of the origin of the most ancient cities in southern Mesopotamia, to focus on the present city, its planning techniques that do not encompass its complexity, and finally claiming Art as a Method to achieve that desirable city, that city as an artificial paradise, a paradise with the signature of man.

He began with a quote from the English poet Coleridge, which perhaps helps to explain why he had a red rose in his hands today: "If a man should pass through Paradise in a dream and be given a flower as proof that he has been there, and if on awakening he should find that flower in his hand...then?"

(Lights out and the first slide of an Angel)

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov exhibit 65 projects at the Palacio de Cristal del Retiro. They are 65 utopias to make man happier. And it is no coincidence that these works are exhibited in a greenhouse. The Crystal Palace was inaugurated in 1885 to house the Universal Exhibition of the Philippines, where a series of fragile and exotic plants are housed, which without the protection of a greenhouse could not live. It was also in 1885 that the first modern skyscraper was completed in Chicago. By chance or not, that was a time of dreams and challenges. It is in that same spirit that this exhibition by Kabakov is installed in the Crystal Palace, which thus becomes a Greenhouse of Utopias, as fragile and exotic as those first plants in the Philippines, and with the same need for protection. (...)

(Excerpt from the lectures held at the Palacio de Cristal, MNCARS, Madrid, 1999).