Exhibition
Pavel Pepperstein - From Mordor With Love - Regina Gallery
Regina Gallery, London is pleased to announce a solo show, “From Mordor with Love” by acclaimed Russian artist Pavel Pepperstein, running 30th June to 2nd September.
Pepperstein is a multi-disciplinary creative power house. He represented Russia at the 2009 Venice Biennale, has presented a number of international solo exhibitions, authored several books, and regularly complements his art with his notorious rap performances (as he will here in London).
Taking his cue from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Pepperstein invokes Mordor, the nefarious hangout of Sauron, whose ring would become the common object of pursuit for both the novel’s good and evil. Likewise, in Pepperstein’s paintings, Mordor becomes embroiled in contradictory symbols of super-powerful forces: the Soviet red star (Red Star, 2010), the American Flag (USA Square, 2010) and the Union Jack (English Square, 2010). Mordor’s own flag is a composite of a National Socialist white circle against a red background, with at its centre a Malevich-inspired black square from whose corners sprout colourful Smithson-esque scrolls.
Contemporary Russia, then, is the object of Pepperstein’s futuristic fantasies, where tensions – such as those between Islam and Christianity (Red Cross and 4 Red Crescents, 2010) – find uncomfortable, disjunctive aesthetic resolution. By 2224, the date mentioned in Square with Scrolls (2010), the country’s ideological and political contradictions will have solidified into a single, coherent triangle, captioned with a phrase that would have made Ian Fleming proud: From Mordor with Love (2010).
