Павел Лемберский

Pavel Lembersky (in Russian — Павел Лемберский) was born in sun-bathed city of Odessa, Ukraine, along with Anna Akhmatova, Isaac Babel, Yuri Olesha, Vladimir Zhabotinsky, and other greats. Following in his father’s footsteps, he enrolled at the Odessa College of Refrigeration and Food Industry, more out of necessity than choice: the science of food preservation being the lesser of two evils next to an otherwise compulsory stint in the Soviet Army. Emigrating to the United States in 1977, Pavel quickly discovered that the canned food market was hopelessly cornered by Andy Warhol, so he decided to concentrate on a career of a foot messenger.

Pavel took multiple stabs at the Arts at The School of Visual Arts, while supporting himself as a cab driver, garment district shipping clerk and speed reading program salesman. Following a cross-country move, he studied comparative literature (Russian and English) at UC Berkeley, where he was lectured by the likes of Czeslaw Milosz, Rene Girard, Claude Levi-Strauss and Michel Foucault. In his undergraduate thesis Pavel applied Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony to Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Faulkner’s The Snopes Trilogy.

In the mid-80 Pavel studied Film Theory and Production at San Francisco State University under the benevolent gaze of Dean August Coppola, who, nevertheless, could not countenance Pavel’s proposal for a 3 minute MTV-style mini-rock opera Oedipus Redux (libretto by Sophocles, noise-music and camerawork by Pavel Lembersky).

Back in New York, Pavel supported himself as a computer programmer, while writing screenplays and working in the film industry on such projects as Jonathan Demme and Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia and the Oscar-winning The Appointments of Dennis Jennings, written and starring the comedian Steven Wright, among others.

After a two-year stint in the business jungle of Yeltsin’s Russia,  Pavel entered the 21st century as a co-host of a classic rock program on New York’s Russian radio and occasional curator of downtown art shows. One such show, entitled Living with It, had Pavel sharing his apartment with some 30+ artworks by 27 New York artists, the kitchen and bathroom both turned into installations.