PEPPERSTEIN, PAVEL

* 29.5.1966 Moskow

Pavel Pepperstein was born in Moscow in 1966, the son of the writer Irina Pivovarova and the painter Viktor Pivorarov. From 1985 to 1987 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. In the year of his graduation, he founded the artist group "Medical Hermeneutics", with Sergeji Anufriev, Yuri Leiderman and Vladimir Fedorov, who, with the fall of Communism and the resulting opening up to the West, reflected on their own art and culture of the East. A great influence on his work was that of Ilja Kabakov. However, Pepperstein, does not devote himself exclusively to fine art, but also works as an art critic, designer, poet and curator. He is one of the most influential artists of the Russian art scene. In 1994 he was visiting professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt; in 1997-1998 he received a scholarship from the Akademie Solitude in Stuttgart. Pavel Pepperstein lives in Moscow and Tel Aviv.

The combination of Russian and antique legends, but also the linking of supremacist motifs with Pop Art motifs affords him access to an unbelievably rich pictorial language, which he combines partly in the form of complex compositions but also as scattered images, or he tells a story. With a light hand, Pepperstein reveals a surprising, surrealist and almost mythical world which leaves all possibilities of interpretation open to the viewer. Playfully he questions the universal canons of art, literature, politics and the media.

In addition to numerous group and solo shows, in 2004 Pavel Pepperstein showed at the 26^th Sao Paulo Biennale. In 2009 he was invited to take part in the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In 2014 he was one of the participants of the 10^th Manifesta in St. Petersburg. In the same year he was awarded the prestigious Kandinsky Prize.