Carnival dance: anniversary of the RPTC Art Group. Part 1

Review of the Art Team of PCA. A five-year report show.» HSE ART GALLYERY on Pioner 03.02.2026 — 25.03.2026

In five years, a certain backbone has been crystallized in the philosophical and artistic debate of the group. One of their super-tasks is called the development of a new direction in modern art (and modern thought, among others), «carnaval conceptualism».

The conceptions of «carnival conceptualism» as they appear in the PCSS work are manifested in modelled images — bright, pompous, often dressed in joke costumes or baroque outfits, when imputed to the world of historical fashion or theatre. The duo seeks, through color, language, quotations, rhymes with modern culture, to influence the audience therapeutically. Laughter, tricks, tricks, provocations, but at the same time sincerity, kindness, counsel — these are the methods of enveloping an audience into the field of intelligence and joy. According to the authors, «In general, group practice can be defined as a bridge between ``the research of the festival'' and '`the celebration of the study'».

However, the exhibition offers a number of «layers» combining the works into a single conceptual system. The first is the photo series «Blinopy» (2025), which is a red thread in the first two exhibition halls. Here, artists reflect on the mystical and border festival of the Butterfly. On the one hand, it involves collective fun and pancakes, and on the other, these social practices are deeply ritualistic. The image of the sun in the pancake is fading. The animal product becomes a key symbol for the transition of the light from long hibernation to a state of awakeness. Photos represent portraits of people. They are stamped as if after a medical (namely referred to as «Medgermeneutics») procedure. Someone looks blissfully into the lens, someone sits very carefully, afraid to move in front of the camera, someone talking lively to someone behind the frame.

They all have pancakes on their heads. They go through a session of so-called panther therapy, where authors put on top of «patients» fresh warm pancakes, resembling nymbes, in the hope of enabling them to upgrade, heal, connect with space. Around the project, the authors, along with those close to them, formed an entire association, BLINCOM (Blind Committee), which aims to explore pancakes treatment options. But that’s not all. Photos are located in such a way that people’s portraits «see» the entire exhibition, becoming models of perfect viewers. Perfect in the sense that they go through a cleansing ceremony, a sort of hypnosis. They return the exposures given by the authors to the heat and balance. The viewer who comes to the exhibition, including the stage of transformation through hypnosis, along with the portraits (in the authors ' opinion). The artist-specter scheme works as a complementary and interdependent system of space impacts.

The PCSS shows in three halls of the gallery the fragments of four major painting projects: Phantomocardography (2021), Visions of the Stars (2021), and Zecurats (2022–2023), Nairodadaism. Falling hooligan from fence» (2023). They refer, for example, to the work of imagination and association in considering the contours of geographical elements on maps. Phantomographics — how the world’s slipping morphisms, associations, pareydolia, inversions and hallucinations affect the perception of the world on an unconscious level. Based on the cartoon maps of the First World War, artists display hidden absurd images in the contours of a State, an area on a map.

The «Star Visions» series appears to focus on singers who have left a great mark on popular audio culture and are collectively conscious and unconscious (another angle of dichotomy popularized by Sigmund Freud). Alla Bogachev, Britney Spears, Igor Nikolaev, Shura, all of these and other artists are involved in fantastic semantic canvas games. The authors, as they themselves put it, create a «plan map» on the body of an unconscious modern society, wondering in side by side why the music industry that created these artists, these «gogs», is shaping our thinking and behaviour. How does it affect the authors themselves? Coding selected singers into the elaborate structures of painting towels, Pavel Pepperstein and Sonia Stereostyrsky are released into long-term reflexes about the influence of singers on all and all, even on animals, explaining the impact of music on all forms of life through the complex principle of «environmental unconscious».

In the second room, work from the «Ziccurata» series was placed on the perimeter of the black walls. On canvass, many square images of different sizes are placed on each other. The form was based on the architecture of the Ziccurate, a temple in ancient Sevreia. The images are collected as if we’re watching the ziccurates from the height of the bird’s flight — the pyramids are crumbling. Each painting in the author’s mind is «a prayer turned to a higher power, climbing up a step-by-step structure». This appeal to the sky is directed at the different ideas of life, from love and children to nature and youth. In addition, paintings play the role of riddles and rebuses, involving the audience in loosening the image signs and reconstructing the original texts of authors to the outside world.

The final, fourth project is «Nairodatism. The fall of the hooligan from the fence» is a demonstration of the art group’s experiments in the field of artificial intelligence. Pavel Pepperstein’s original painting, «The Fall of a Huligan from the fence» (2021), is being developed and reinterpreted in a series of active interactions with Midjourney. The authors are watching what the story would look like if it were written by several artists with their time-specific stylistic features. Despite the design and expectation of unstoppable work by neuronets, the visual space still allows system malfunctions and failures.

Returning to the «layers» of the exhibition, it is important to note the proportion of archival material shown on the tables. In the first two halls, the black table on the long legs is like crossing the hardness of the walls, passing through it and in two spaces at the same time. On this table there are collators of printed documents and images, as well as videos on tablets: documentation of performances and events, invitations to exhibitions and events, photographs of authors at exhibitions with their works, personal archives with stars (inspiration for painting projects). Under the table in the second room, there was a funny «Fish Lake» object, a reference to the art group’s projects and initial initiatives. This documentary cut revives the members of the RPTC art group, speaks of a process of inexhaustible creative work.

There’s another table in the last, small room. The artifacts of parties organized by the art group (e.g. objects from the Cowboys and Mermaids party), unique copyrights (Oystera site, photographs and poetic text) and photo-documentation of the standing session of «Cabinet of Oneiratic Psychoanalytic Analysis» (2025) are available here. The addition of objects to the exhibit continues to support the multi-dimensionality of the art group.