Kabakov's installation "Before Dinner" deals with transitions and boundaries that separate the work from its environment, the everyday trivial. The fold-out publication with a cardboard cover was designed by the artist and consists of two texts by Kabakov, in German and Russian, as well as colored illustrations of individual parts and sketches of the installation.

Catalog with annotations for the exhibition "Before dinner" by Ilya Kabakov, held from March 20 to April 8, 1988. “What can you say about the idea of ​​this installation? 40 drawings form a frame with a white void in the middle, this "frame" is flanked on both sides by 6 paintings, with plates, forks and knives at the corners of each of them. The seventh painting, thanks to the legs screwed to it, has been transformed into a table, which stands in front of the wall, exactly in the middle of the “frame”. The second situation proposed in this installation also raises the problem of the collision of opposites, this time of Rama and what this frame surrounds. Here we come to the problem of the edge, separating something closed from the surrounding emptiness of non-being ”(I. Kabakov).