Stefan Tcherepnin

(*1977, US)
Chariot of a Secret Order, 2016
Fake fur, wood, amplifier, CD player, stones from Niesen
101 × 182 × 160 cm

Shadow Monster,
2016
Fake fur, leather, thread, wood
260 × 210 × 80 cm

Stefan Tcherepnin is a composer, musician and visual artist. He lives and works in Brooklyn and comes from a family of composers: his great-grand-father Nikolai Tcherepnin was the director of the music conservatory in Tbilisi from 1917 to 1921, and his grandfather and father were also composers and so is his brother, the artist and musician Sergei Tcherepnin. Tcherepnin’s approach to creating visual art is informed by his background in music composition and performance. The oafish absurdity that is Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster–a recurring subject within Tcherepnin’s aesthetic–appears in different versions and includes its transmogrification into a three-footed, piano-shaped sculpture covered in actual Cookie Monster-blue fake fur, with the creature’s pair of signature saucer eyes sitting atop the piano’s lid.