To mark the end of his exhibition The Human as a Frame for the Landscape, Pavel Pepperstein presents his clothing collection.
Taking on the role of fashion designer, the artist has produced a collection of women’s dresses and men’s suits. Each garment is based on his artworks, including the series of drawings Landscapes of the Future, which Pepperstein showed in the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2009.
Each dress is a unique kaleidoscope of symbols, fairy tales, myths, and fantasies. Pepperstein will talk about the making of the collection, which combines the functionality of clothing with the picturesque quality of art.
As well as dresses and suits, the presentation will include scarves by DURDONA with Pepperstein's prints.
The artist is very grateful to Varvara Kuznetsova-Gvozdik for her active involvement and help with creating the collection.
“This collection is based on the idea that beauty arises from transcendence of the laws of the present moment, and each enchantment is based on a cross-fertilization of times: the distant past and the distant future. That which enchants us is an alloy of remembrance and presentiment. The memory, prophecies, and hopes of all humankind are glimpsed through our personal remembrances and presentiments. Every genuinely fashionable woman is a map of times, in which bold insights are interwoven with the shadows of civilizations that have already been forgotten or not yet been born. In this collection I draw on both the audacious breakthroughs of the Russian avant-garde and the hallucinatory visions of mystics who since ancient times have revealed to humankind’s inner eye images of ages destined to appear on earth in many hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of years’ time. The time may come when there are no more human beings, but fashion will endure: other beings will walk out onto the runway, the glances of other eyes will inflame hearts, other profiles will burst impetuously into other consciousnesses. Do not think that we don’t feel this here and now. Every sensitive woman who wishes to please and to astound the imagination subconsciously senses the totality of the past and the future. Every dress is a minor philosophical treatise, expounded in the language of elegance. A long story could be told about each of these dresses, but I will try to keep things brief.”