NADA Miami 2020

Pavel Pepperstein and Carlos Noronha Feio

Pavel Pepperstein (USSR, 1966) and Carlos Noronha Feio (Portugal, 1981) are artists from different generations and geo-political realities. Independently of this oversimplification, they are both artists that use the old Shakespearean trick of geographical, or even geo-temporal displacement to produce some of their most relevant work. This shared strategically and aesthetical interest is what Iragui gallery would like to highlight at NADA Miami 2020.

Pepperstein’s visual language is full of outer-space odysseys. Nostalgic retro futuristic Russian / soviet space conquest and inhabitation are mixed with traditional and art historical references. Pepperstein presents this as a pre-eminent figure in the Moscow Conceptualism movement, a form of Russian contemporary art where drawing and text come together to form a school of production.

Noronha Feio’s displacement is more prominent in his rug series. Noronha Feio’s rugs show images of spacecrafts and worlds produced in a traditional Portuguese technique of cross stitch rug making from one of the most peaceful corners of the known world, he crossed it with the aesthetics of war rugs from Afghanistan and creates the metaphor “If we found new worlds, what would we export there that would represent us all?”

Iragui gallery’s presentation would be otherworldly but domestic, the gallery would present works on paper by Pepperstein and a rug work, as well as text pieces by Noronha Feio. Noronha Feio’s text pieces are a means to reflect his practice and his thoughts. His project at NADA Sculpture part in 2019 exposes that. His golden-mirrored steel long sentence placed in the midst of the gardens hedge spelled (even if at heart we are uncertain of the will to connect, there is a common future ahead!).