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11/2/2013

Pavel Pepperstein

Grinberg Gallery, Moscow

Grinberg Gallery, previously focused on photography, is going to expand its scope in 2013 and start a program of artistic cooperation, which will allow it to exceed bounds of purely photographic experience and pay attention to some other spheres of contemporary art.

When being narrowly specialized, one easily forgets the embracing context of the wider world. Photography has first been developed in the XIX century to satisfy requests of the time, as people were thrilled with the new epoch, wanted some striking impressions and special effects not known before. The captured image of the reality provided many new possibilities, including commercial (for instance, in advertisement and journalism). Since then the role and functions of photography in the cultural history have been changed and redefined more than once. The identity search (i.e. analysis) is always followed by the integration stage. Photography market as modern gallery owners and photographers understand it has first appeared merely 40 years ago, since then it has developed its own rules, has boomed, and now it is being actively blended with the global market of contemporary art. This fact once again gives us a pretext to recall of the history of editioned printing before and after the triumph of the Modernism, to consider its importance before and after Walter Benjamin and his essay «The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction». It is within the contemporary artistic process that photography converges with other printing practices, which allows expanding its context, considering the photography as “a small family” within “the extended family”. The photography has lots of “cousins”, and there is no big difference between family branches.

The Paperworks Gallery (owned by Yelena Bakanova and Evgeniy Mitta) is Grinberg Gallery’s partner in the first project of its new collaboration program. The Paperworks Gallery has always been paying a lot of attention to graphics in general, and particularly, to editioned prints. In 2012, Paperworks has opened a large department for the Replication Art, named Paperworks Editions. On the one hand, Paperworks is based on the post-Renaissance tradition, considering prints a democratic art, affordable to the broader audience and produced without support from a high-ranking Patron of Arts. On the other hand, the modernist tradition has also more than favored prints (actually, it is the technical reproducibility that has validated of photographic techniques for creation of art works).

Certainly, accessibility in the meaning of the affordability isn’t necessarily the ultimate goal when an editioned piece of art is being created. However, in the middle of the XX century it was printed graphics of Fernand Leger or Pablo Picasso that helped to bring the contemporary art closer to the audience, and in 1960-ies the initiative is already inherited by the Pop art. Andy Warhol produces his silk-screen prints on an industrial scale, which absolutely complies with his poetics of the mass market.

This did not prevent the mass-scale works have from becoming exceptionally expensive collectibles in due time. In Russia, for instance, Yuri Albert starts a dialogue with the Pop art by means of his printed references to singular works of Lichtenstein, who in his turn drew dot patterns for magazine comics by hand.

Generally, the up-to-date Russian experience played in favor of the development of printed graphics. In the 1970-ies — 1980-ies the Moscow Conceptualism actively used the genre of “album”, consisting of some handwritten pages. Such albums could be printed (gravures, photocopies). It would be rather complicated to understand works of Ilya Kabakov and Victor Pivovarov with no reference to the album format. In fact, these artists were the ones who have invented this genre within the conceptualism. Pages from an album can be framed, thus forming a series, which can be used to decorate an apartment. Otherwise, these pages can be stored in a box for demonstration on special occasions.

The modern photography market has been formed under the influence of the printed graphics market, and their rules and guidelines are quite alike. In both cases a certain closed print-run distributed via galleries is declared, along with a certain amount of author proof copies (which the artist uses at his or her own discretion). All copies are signed and numbered. The price normally grows while more and more copies within the edition are being sold (price increase is considered by the author together with and the Gallery). Normally the prices are not reduced. After the entire edition is sold, albums or singular prints start their circulation in the secondary market, where they are resold and auctioned, which in the course of time causes price growth. However, the most important fact is that both the photography and the printed graphics let collectors acquire a high-grade art work for a reasonable price.

Realizing all this, and aiming to master “the extended family context”, the Grinberg Gallery together with the Paperworks Gallery is proud to present Pavel Pepperstein’s album “The Day”.

Textual and visual practices of Pavel Pepperstein are sometimes perceived independently, though his works, both textual and visual, are always a kind of a book, “an album”, an integral artistic expression. Grinberg Gallery, previously focused on photography, is going to expand its scope in 2013 and start a program of artistic cooperation, which will allow it to exceed bounds of purely photographic experience and pay attention to some other spheres of contemporary art.

When being narrowly specialized, one easily forgets the embracing context of the wider world. Photography has first been developed in the XIX century to satisfy requests of the time, as people were thrilled with the new epoch, wanted some striking impressions and special effects not known before. The captured image of the reality provided many new possibilities, including commercial (for instance, in advertisement and journalism). Since then the role and functions of photography in the cultural history have been changed and redefined more than once. The identity search (i.e. analysis) is always followed by the integration stage. Photography market as modern gallery owners and photographers understand it has first appeared merely 40 years ago, since then it has developed its own rules, has boomed, and now it is being actively blended with the global market of contemporary art. This fact once again gives us a pretext to recall of the history of editioned printing before and after the triumph of the Modernism, to consider its importance before and after Walter Benjamin and his essay «The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction». It is within the contemporary artistic process that photography converges with other printing practices, which allows expanding its context, considering the photography as “a small family” within “the extended family”. The photography has lots of “cousins”, and there is no big difference between family branches.

The Paperworks Gallery (owned by Yelena Bakanova and Evgeniy Mitta) is Grinberg Gallery’s partner in the first project of its new collaboration program. The Paperworks Gallery has always been paying a lot of attention to graphics in general, and particularly, to editioned prints. In 2012, Paperworks has opened a large department for the Replication Art, named Paperworks Editions. On the one hand, Paperworks is based on the post-Renaissance tradition, considering prints a democratic art, affordable to the broader audience and produced without support from a high-ranking Patron of Arts. On the other hand, the modernist tradition has also more than favored prints (actually, it is the technical reproducibility that has validated of photographic techniques for creation of art works).

Certainly, accessibility in the meaning of the affordability isn’t necessarily the ultimate goal when an editioned piece of art is being created. However, in the middle of the XX century it was printed graphics of Fernand Leger or Pablo Picasso that helped to bring the contemporary art closer to the audience, and in 1960-ies the initiative is already inherited by the Pop art. Andy Warhol produces his silk-screen prints on an industrial scale, which absolutely complies with his poetics of the mass market.

This did not prevent the mass-scale works have from becoming exceptionally expensive collectibles in due time. In Russia, for instance, Yuri Albert starts a dialogue with the Pop art by means of his printed references to singular works of Lichtenstein, who in his turn drew dot patterns for magazine comics by hand.

Generally, the up-to-date Russian experience played in favor of the development of printed graphics. In the 1970-ies — 1980-ies the Moscow Conceptualism actively used the genre of “album”, consisting of some handwritten pages. Such albums could be printed (gravures, photocopies). It would be rather complicated to understand works of Ilya Kabakov and Victor Pivovarov with no reference to the album format. In fact, these artists were the ones who have invented this genre within the conceptualism. Pages from an album can be framed, thus forming a series, which can be used to decorate an apartment. Otherwise, these pages can be stored in a box for demonstration on special occasions.

The modern photography market has been formed under the influence of the printed graphics market, and their rules and guidelines are quite alike. In both cases a certain closed print-run distributed via galleries is declared, along with a certain amount of author proof copies (which the artist uses at his or her own discretion). All copies are signed and numbered. The price normally grows while more and more copies within the edition are being sold (price increase is considered by the author together with and the Gallery). Normally the prices are not reduced. After the entire edition is sold, albums or singular prints start their circulation in the secondary market, where they are resold and auctioned, which in the course of time causes price growth. However, the most important fact is that both the photography and the printed graphics let collectors acquire a high-grade art work for a reasonable price.

Realizing all this, and aiming to master “the extended family context”, the Grinberg Gallery together with the Paperworks Gallery is proud to present Pavel Pepperstein’s album “The Day”.

Textual and visual practices of Pavel Pepperstein are sometimes perceived independently, though his works, both textual and visual, are always a kind of a book, “an album”, an integral artistic expression. Phantasmagorical drawings (characteristic to the author) that form “The Day”, allegedly re-consider the Great Patriotic / II World War in an allegorical way, but on a deeper level (according to the author himself) they transform the Victory Day of May 9, 1945 into “…an eternal Victory Day, distinguished by the everlasting white light, blinding out all things and leaving only clear graphic contours, that interlace to form structures of a daydream delirium”.

In addition to the exhibited album, the Galleries present albums of Valery Chtak and Victor Pivovarov, printed in 2012, along with one more album by Pepperstein, “The Gun and the Heart”.“…an eternal Victory Day, distinguished by the everlasting white light, blinding out all things and leaving only clear graphic contours, that interlace to form structures of a daydream delirium”.

In addition to the exhibited album, the Galleries present albums of Valery Chtak and Victor Pivovarov, printed in 2012, along with one more album by Pepperstein, “The Gun and the Heart”.

Image: #4 from the Day Album. Print on Rosaspina Fabriano. 56x40 cm.

Grinberg Gallery
Bottling Hall, WINZAVOD CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
4th Syromyatnicheskiy pereulok,1/6, Moscow
Visiting hours:
12 pm - 8 pm
closed Monday

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