books & essays

Non-Standard: Irv Tepper’s Oppositional Cups

Irv Tepper has a collection of restaurant china cups. They line the kitchen wall of his SoHo studio in an abstract arrangement of sets and families and unique examples, while more pile up on shelves. ... read more

Forma, Luz y Posibilidad

Me he acercado a ver las piezas de Tepper con la curiosidad de un arqueólogo. Las piezas en si se parecen más de lo que yo creía pero se diferencian en lo que mas se parecen. ... read more

Animism

Irvin Tepper’s ceramic cups and intensely rendered drawings are alive and endowed with feelings. Tepper’s drawings of porcelain cups relate by way of narrative texts the story the cup has observed. ... read more

Third Cup of Coffee

Cups and saucers continuously recur in Tepper’s drawings and ceramics, which means that a single motif has given him sufficient occasion to say what he needs to say about art or life. This is not a case of an artist’s fetish. Not exactly. ... read more

A Cup of a Photograph

Photography has been a persistent component of Irv Tepper’s dialogue with the cup for the past thirty years. At different times Tepper has turned to photography as a seemingly transparent medium for the production of conceptual artworks, as a compositional tool in his drawing process, and increasingly as a medium for the production of independent pictures. ... read more

Sacred Vessels

Irvin Tepper’s best known contributions to contemporary art are the ceramics and the bronzes, drawings, and photographs inspired by the common coffee cup. Tepper’s cups are transformed into sacred vessels because, although broken, they are redeemed by the artist’s aesthetic and by the rightness of their form, the purity of their color, and the beauty of their porcelain surfaces. ... read more

Burnt

If this room could speak, imagine the tales it could tell. Stories about love and betrayal, kissing and killing, sadness and boredom, the endless seduction would replay as easily as a video. ... read more