AES+F

Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich and Evgeny Svyatsky formed the AES Group in 1987. Vladimir Fridkes joined them in 1995, and the group became known as AES+F. AES+F works with new media — digital collage, video and photography – and also traditional techniques, such as sculpture, painting, drawing. Works by AES+F have been shown at numerous contemporary art biennales — Lyon (2000), Gwangju (2002), Sydney (2004, 2010), Moscow (2005–2011), Tirana (2006), Istanbul (2007), Venice (2007, 2009), Kiev (2012) and others.

The current project, “Allegoria Sacra,” is linked to the eponymous painting by Giovanni Bellini and is the third part of a trilogy about the modern world (Hell — Heaven — Purgatory) that began with the projects “Last Riot” and “The Feast of Trimalchio,” shown at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and 2009, respectively. Dreams of passengers at an airport are intertwined with each other in a mythological reality in which a centaur is at the center of a romantic battle in the desert; a Dreamliner-dragon lands on a snowy runway; cannibals in the jungle dance with ladies; and an old Job turns into a baby mutant with help of angel-stewardesses (an homage to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”) and demon-cannibals. A metaphor of modern civilization and its relativistic values emerges from a mix of surreal images of new and ancient religions, stereotypes from the media, comics and fantasy films. It all ends with image of a river carrying planes to the horizon, mythological monsters and space stations…