Golden Child

In a theatrical finale, the last room in the exhibition features a golden baby gleaming inside a dark space. The image of a golden child brings to mind a host of alchemical, mystical or esoteric associations and forms a final point at which the various practices, themes, and personal stories that form Pepperstein’s world converge. Could this be Pepperstein, the crown prince of Moscow Conceptualism? Or perhaps it is Pasha Pivovarov, the boy who grew up surrounded by the love of his parents? “My parents rose above me like two suns that lit up the silent planet of my childhood,” Pepperstein recalls. “I could barely identify the borders between them and myself: it seemed to me that I was entirely made up of the light they emitted.” The golden child is an almost non-material source of light (the tiny figure is about three centimeters high): a souvenir of a god or a grandiose superpower, as in Pepperstein’s short story “The Architect and the Golden Child.”