Ordinarily, these dinners are held in restaurants nestled in the shadows of the art spaces they celebrate – museums, galleries, and the like. Yet, on occasion, the art spaces themselves transform into banquet halls, their stark walls echoing with chatter and clinking cutlery.
In his series of watercoloured ink drawings entitled ‘Dinners’, Pavel Pepperstein invites us into this world. The images depict a succession of feasts allegedly held in the hallowed halls of the most prestigious contemporary art museums.
Yet, the scenes are far from ordinary. They are presented in a mythologising manner, thus creating an alternate universe. By embedding historical events in fictional stories, for example, the line between reality and fantasy is straddled here. Look closely, and the viewer will discern not just humans partaking in these dinners. Amid Pepperstein’s distinctive calligraphic markings, animals, aliens and exotic creatures mingle with icons of art history.
Created in 2023, this series is a testament to Pepperstein’s unique artistic vision. It offers a glimpse into the unseen social structures and behaviours of the art world, presented through a lens that is as whimsical as it is thought-provoking.
Artist, musician, theorist, novelist and film director, Pavel Pepperstein was born in 1966 in Moscow. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague from 1985–87, and shortly after co-founded the artist collective Inspection Medical Hermeneutics. Pepperstein’s oeuvre is very much influenced by Suprematism, Constructivism and Moscow Conceptualism.
Pavel Pepperstein was awarded the Kandinsky Prize in 2014. His works belong to numerous public collections, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Kunstmuseum Basel; the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin; and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. KEWENIG Gallery has been associated with the artist for many years and has held numerous solo exhibitions at its venues in Cologne, Palma de Mallorca and Berlin.
