Pavel Pepperstein

The Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present the first Canadian exhibition by Russian born artist Pavel Pepperstein. Pepperstein has an eccentric practice in which he mixes painting, drawing and writing to build idiosyncratic iconographies and elaborate chronologies that both reflect a hazy past and predict a fantastic future. His recent series of paintings and drawings, *Landscapes of Future* depicts an absurd timeline of a not so plausible future. Many of the pieces in this body of work link figures of Russian mythology and fairy tales with wings and symbols from critical theory, literature and current politics, creating a bizarrely abstract representation of a society as we know it that hovers between optimism and anxiousness. Pepperstein aptly situates this series within the genre of landscape painting. In general, the individual works either directly incorporate the common tropes of this genre or move toward total abstraction; for example *2388* depicts the year lakes will begin to fly and *3017* abstractly represents the fight between “The All” and “Nothing.” 

### Biography

Pavel Pepperstein (b.1966) lives and works in Moscow. He graduated from the Akademie der Schönen Künste in Prague in 1987, and was a scholarship holder at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart in 1997-98. In 1994 he was guest Professor at Städelschule, Frankfurt a.M. Solo exhibitions in recent years have included shows at Galerie Kamm, Berlin; Sutton Lane, London; Elizabeth Kaufmann, Zurich; as well as Kunsthaus Zug, Switzerland and Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Germany; among others.



A small watercolor painting depicting a watery landscape with a bright red square shape in the centre. Faint pencil text is visible at the top of the paper. 

thumbnail_00-HEADER-PavelPepperstein.jpg

00-HEADER-PavelPepperstein.jpg

Unframed colour drawings are exhibited in a gallery space. Five pieces on the walls are visible in this image. They depict organic shapes including waves and some single-celled organisms.

thumbnail_01-PavelPepperstein-2007.jpeg

01-PavelPepperstein-2007.jpeg

Nine unframed coloured drawings are mounted on the gallery walls. Eight of them are coloured. All of the pieces depict some creatures including humans and bacterias. 

thumbnail_02-PavelPepperstein-2007.jpeg

02-PavelPepperstein-2007.jpeg

Four coloured drawings are mounted on the gallery wall. Two of them are larger than the rest. These large drawings depict geometric shapes including triangles and circles. 

thumbnail_03-PavelPepperstein-2007.jpeg

03-PavelPepperstein-2007.jpeg

Six unframed coloured drawings are mounted on the gallery walls. They depict abstract images resembling various seascapes. Various red, blue, and sand colours are used in those drawings.

Pavel Pepperstein

Exhibitions