Pavel Pepperstein
Pavel Pepperstein was born from an artistically inclined family. His mother, Irina Pivovarov, was a poet and author of children's literature. His father, Russian painter Viktor Pivovarov, contributed to the founding of the Moscow Conceptualist Movement in the 1970s. In 1985, Pepperstein pursued his own artistic inclinations at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague before launching Inspection Medical Hermeneutics, an experimental artist’s coalition that utilized installations and the performing arts as instruments in commenting on the anxieties surrounding the opening Soviet Union. Inspection Medical Hermeneutics‘ commentary on political conditions foreshadowed Pepperstein‘s propensity to remark on political and cultural discourse within his paintings. Though Pepperstein‘s “psychedelic realist” scenery features bright water colors and outwardly cartoonish characters, his pieces emote an ominous tone. Within the confines of a single painting, Pepperstein marries child-like illustrations, political motifs, and menacing tones to uncover the distrust that strangles our “political reality”. The artist’s cynicism extends beyond political reality to encompass the gallery industry which he considers to be another corporate system. Regardless of his unwavering critiques, Pavel Pepperstein is acknowledged as a valued creator of the international art scene, with institutions and collectors alike seeking to claim ownership to his analytical works. Pepperstein‘s artwork combines recognizable cultural images with witty commentary. His works feature allusions to surrealism, Malevich's Suprematist model, Eastern watercolour, pop art, book illustration and political cartoons. During his artistic career Pepperstein has had more than 100 solo exhibitions in Russia and abroad. His major exhibition projects include a presentation at the 53rd Venice Biennale in the Russian Pavilion with the installation Landscapes of the Future. In 2014, he was personally invited by the renowned curator Kasper König to present his work at Manifesta 10. In the same year, he was awarded the Kandinsky Prize. Pepperstein's works have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, including the Louvre in Paris. His paintings, drawings and installations can also be seen in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Deutsche Bank collection, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, as well as in the collection of Roman Abramovich, one of the world's richest men, and other private collections around the world. The fashion house Louis Vuitton collaborated with him for their Travel Book Series project to illustrate the Prague guidebooks with his unique drawings.