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Pavel Pepperstein - USSR
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HOW DID CONCEPTUAL ARTISTS MAKE TAROT CARDS?
ELENA SELINA, DIRECTOR AND CURATOR OF XL GALLERY
Having denoted the obvious correspondence between the ancient teaching and Moscow Conceptualism - may the true esoterics forgive me such an easy-minded blasphemy, - I called some of the artists belonging to Noma, to play this game. The initial list included Nikita Alexeev, Konstantin Zvezdochetov, Elena Elagina, Igor Makarevich, Victor Pivovarov, Vadim Zakharov and Pavel Pepperstein. Distinct conceptuality of Tarot was just one premise to involve them in the Tarot project. Another one is based on spontaneous tradition of Moscow Conceptualism, the tradition of author-made albums. This tradition started with albums by Kabakov and Pivovarov, and continued in other artists' stalwart loving to Guttenbergian form of expressing themselves within the borders of their general art system. Choosing Tarot also seemed preferable and advantageous because with all the seamless integrity of initial codes, the pack itself has been embodied into almost innumerable variants; just to name Egyptian, Spanish, French, Gypsy and so on, some of the variants considerably digressed from the original canons. This, too, well corresponded with variety of Moscow Conceptualism layouts - by Makarevich, by Alexeev, by Pivovarov, by Zvezdochetov, you name it... Respectively some of the artists have chosen the full pack with both Arcana, some made just Major Arcane, some - Minor one, or what might look like playing cards, the Tarot offspring.
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