HSE Art & Design School Invites You to UTOP-TOP-TOPIA Exhibition at HSE ART Gallery

The HSE ART Gallery is opening its second season with an animation and illustration exhibition by first-year students. The exhibition was prepared as part of a course designed and taught by Russian artist Pavel Pepperstein in HSE’s Art & Design School this spring.

Opening: September 19, 7 pm

Dates: September 11 – October 6 (Wed-Sun, noon – 8 pm)

Address: 12 Malaya Pionerskaya, HSE ART Gallery, Paveletskaya Metro Station. Free admission.

The HSE ART Gallery is opening its second season with an animation and illustration exhibition by first-year students. The exhibition was prepared as part of a course designed and taught by Russian artist Pavel Pepperstein in HSE’s Art & Design School this spring. The theme of utopia, which the artist chose for both his classes and the exhibition, recurs throughout his works. Pavel talked to the students about types of utopian constructions and his own creative practices, and he conducted a half-mock group meditation session to stimulate new project ideas. The artist set no limits on the exhibition participants: they used their own techniques, materials, and interpretations of the theme. And the exhibition is what resulted. For the student participants, it was their first experience with real contemporary art work, and many of them experimented with new genres for the first time and wrote texts to accompany their work. The young artists had complete freedom to choose their medium—whether it was painting, drawing, videos, creating an installation, or rendering conceptual expressions, each of them created their own utopia.

Pavel Pepperstein is a Russian artist, writer, rapper, contemporary art theoretician, and one of the founders of the art group, Inspection Medical Hermeneutics. Exhibitions of his work have been held at the State Russian Museum (together with Ivan Dmitriev; St. Petersburg, 1997), the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein (2002), the Kunstmuseum Basel (2006), the Multimedia Art Museum Moscow (2015), the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (2019), and others. Pavel has participated in large-scale contemporary art exhibitions, such as the International São Paulo Art Biennial (2004), the Venice Biennale (2009), and Manifesta (2014). He was awarded the Kandinsky Prize in 2014.

About the Gallery

The HSE ART GALLERY of contemporary art opened at the HSE Art & Design School in Moscow in the autumn of 2018. The gallery attracts School teachers and students, as well as independent curators, to organise exhibitions. Since its opening, the gallery has provided a dynamic venue for students and teachers of the School’s programme in Contemporary Art to exhibit their work and engage in artistic dialogue. Theoretical knowledge is nothing compared to real-life work, so the gallery is not a closed testing area, but a real exhibition space aimed for a very picky viewer. Thanks to the gallery, the students not only have the opportunity to exhibit their projects, but to also take part in group exhibitions together with renowned authors, as well as to be involved in all organizational procedures of an exhibition creation. More information is available at https://art.hse.ru/gallery (in Russian).