Pavel Peppershteyn

Born in Moscow in 1966. In 1987 he completed his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. One of the founders of the artistic group “Inspection ‘Medical Hermeneutics’” — one of the most interesting and productive formations in Russian contemporary art. (Group composition: from 1987 to 1991 — P. Peppershtein, S. Anufriev, Yu. Leiderman; from April 1991 to the present, in place of Yu. Leiderman, who has since worked independently, the group has included V. Fedorov).

Participant in numerous exhibitions in Russia and abroad. Solo exhibitions (selected): “Three Inspectors” (MG, Gallery of Young, Prague), “Orthodox Suckers – Covers and Endings” (MG, Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf).

Author of articles on issues of contemporary art in Russian and foreign publications.

The ideology of “Medical Hermeneutics” is a fusion of seemingly incompatible descriptive languages: from modern Western philosophy and the theological doctrines of Orthodoxy and Taoism to the language of psychiatry and pharmacology, creating a completely unique manner of exposition in which schizoidness is made deliberate and elevated to a method that allows one simultaneously to touch on everything lightly and achieve super-positive results amid the external quasi-scientific quality of the texts. The imitation of madness, however, is inseparable from the irony of the “Medhermeneuts” only insofar as the reader or viewer has equal patience and a sense of humor. The artistic or theoretical texts of “MG,” like their installations or graphics, are unquestionably the brightest thing achieved by the generation of Russian artists that succeeded the “older” conceptualists.

More than 100 solo and group exhibitions in more than 20 countries around the world, including Russia, over just the last ten years. In the ideology and practice of “MG,” no distinction is fundamentally made between individual activity and group activity, although, to be fair, it should be noted that this is the group’s official position, which does not quite correspond to reality. If in the texts and displays of the early period (1987–1991) there really was collective co-creation (even if the text was created in the name of one person), then later, after