Pavel Pepperstein And Guests

by Boris Groys, Ilya Kabakov

Pavel Pepperstein, one of the best-known artists and authors of Russia's younger generation, represents an important link between the elder exponents of Moscow Conceptualism and the young artists of his homeland. While working for the Kunsthaus Zug, Switzerland, from 1998 to 2002, he invited select Russian guests to take part in exhibitions within the context of an unusual collection project. His invitees included the groups Inspection Medical Hermeneutics (which he helped found) and Russland, plus Viktor Pivovarov, Viktor Mazin, Boris Groys, and Ilya Kabakov. Zug thus became a meeting place for Russian artists and their friends, as well as an increasingly interested and enthusiastic audience--an excellent example of sustainable cultural exchange. Pepperstein himself normally painted without preliminary sketches and directly on museum walls, creating brilliant pictures that were painted over after each show. Only in a local schoolhouse, bank, and prison were walls made available for the creation of permanent works which would comprise an expanded, publicly accessible museum collection. Swiss photographer Guido Baselgia documented the successful project over a period of five years.

176 pages, Hardcover

First published August 2, 2004

About the author

Boris Efimovich Groys (born 19 March 1947) is an art critic, media theorist, and philosopher. He is currently a Global Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University and Senior Research Fellow at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe, Germany. He has been a professor of Aesthetics, Art History, and Media Theory at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design/Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe and an internationally acclaimed Professor at a number of universities in the United States and Europe, including the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California and the Courtauld Institute of Art London.