AES+F

Triumph Gallery, Moscow

Moscow, Guelman Gallery, Action Half Life. Episode 2,3, 2003
Paris, Carré Noir Gallery, Paris Photo 2003, 2003
Vienna, Knoll Wien Gallery, 2004
Vienna, Ruzicska Gallery, 2005
Moscow, Triumph Gallery, 2006
St. Petersburg, State Russian Museum, AES - AES+F, 2007

AES - AES+F, St. Petersburg, Palace Editions: 2007, p.277

The work is in good overall condition, clean and ready to hang. Unframed.
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Executed in 2004, this work is from an edition of 5 plus 3 artists' proofs.

During the past twenty years the artistic collective AES+F have forged an outstanding reputation for interrogating the boundaries of what contemporary art can achieve, incorporating a highly impressive and versatile sweep across a spectrum of varying media. Streaming together the strengths of their respective talents, the initial three members Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, and Evgeny Svyatsky, later joined by Vladimir Fridkes, have pioneered a highly inimitable artistic dialect, which has paralleled an era of tectonic change and monumental importance in the history of their native Russia. Just as artisan workshops flourished under the socio-political regeneration of fifteenth-century Medici Florence, and artistic masters radicalised the very nature of painting in the revolutionary climate of eighteenth and nineteenth-century France, so the output of AES+F corresponds to the unprecedented shifts in the Russian socio-political landscape of recent years. Because of its total integrity and unashamed directness in confronting themes and issues that are essentially current, the output of AES+F is inextricably linked to the nature of its contemporaneous climate. Having exhibited internationally for almost twenty years and specifically in The Netherlands, Spain, Austria, the USA, Italy, Germany, Luxembourg, France and Finland in the last two years alone, the strength and quality of this group's achievements has earned them a truly global reputation. AES+F are well-entrenched as among the most innovative artistic forces working today, and continue to further the parameters of Contemporary Art by challenging preconceptions and astounding expectations with their imagination and the extraordinary diversity and aptitude of their technical talent. 

 

Indeed, together with the impressive arc of thematic identities that runs through their work, it is this technical facility that reflects their collective working dynamic. When asked by Olesya Turkina "What do you emphasise in the technology of images: craft, knowledge or art?", AES+F responded "For us the technology, "techne", means art, and we are not afraid of perfectionism" (cited in: "'A Brave New World' AES+F: Oleysya Turkina interviews AES+F Group", in Exhibition Catalogue, St Petersburg, The Ludwig Museum in the Russian Museum, AES: AES+F, 2006, p. 7). AES, the acronym of the artists' surnames, has existed since 1987 and AES+F (including Fridkes) since 1995. By pooling their individual talents the reach of their artistic expression has been so much more extensive and their abilities are wide-ranging. Born in 1955, Arzamasova studied at Moscow's Architectural Institute before exploring the possibilities of conceptual architecture; Evzovich, born in 1958, also studied at the Architectural Institute before developing experience as an art director in animation film, and directing puppet animation film; Svyatsky was born in 1957, and graduated from the University of Printing Arts in Moscow before working in book and advertising design, as well as poster and graphic art; while Fridkes was born in 1956 and has built a very highly regarded reputation as a photographer for international fashion magazines. The multifaceted characters of the projects they have produced together in the last two decades variously reflect these constituent skills and techniques. Furthermore, akin to the methods of Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst, they have not been afraid to enrol the skills of third-party experts to facilitate their concepts to the very highest degree. This is most readily illustrated by their seminal Action Half-Life. Sculptures (2006), which as life-size bronze statues engaged the expertise of the modeller Alexey Shpakovsky and all the machinations of an entire foundry. 

 

The projects of AES, and subsequently AES+F, from the inceptive poster and carpet collages of Serseau (1987) and Apollo Inspiring an Epic Poet (1989), through the variegated installations of the early and mid 1990s, to the taboo-devastating digital collages, installations and action of AES - Witnesses of the Future. Islamic Project (1996) and the seminal bronze sculpture group of Action Half-Life. Sculptures, AES+F have enlisted a plethora of cutting-edge photographic, cinematographic, computer and sculptural technologies, as well as hundreds of children of various nationalities. Due to the scope of their oeuvre, it is very difficult to identify singularly defining features of their artistic identity: in many ways the resonating success of their projects stems from this subtle intangibility. Superficially, it may seem that beyond the courageous confrontation of significant socio-political themes, from the sensationalist, politico-religious taboo baiting of AES - Witnesses of the Future. Islamic Project, to the conflation of mock-violence and quasi-eroticism in Last Riot 2 (2005-07), there is little that binds their key works together. However, Turkina has poignantly identified a vein of pathos that signposts their best work: "A gap between the emotional form and the senses, an alienation peculiar to [their] characters create a formula of pathos which was characteristic both for classical and totalitarian art. That formula, even if the context is not absolutely clear, all the same influences you with a pose, a look, or the light in a picture. This formula of pathos is present in all [their] works" ("'A Brave New World' AES+F: Oleysya Turkina interviews AES+F Group", in Op Cit, p. 49). In the final analysis, through their epic summation of different media and references to contemporary culture AES+F have consistently generated an aesthetic language that triggers reflexes in the viewer's most primal visual and theoretical lexicons. In this regard, their approach is reminiscent of Francis Bacon or Pablo Picasso, both of whom were similarly voracious devourers of visual culture who instinctually punctuated their aesthetic languages with echoes and quotes from shared cultural history. The mature figurative works of AES+F broadcast specifically-organised bodily posturing and atmospheres heavily pregnant with tension that powerfully evoke exemplars of Western Art History such as Donatello's David (c. 1433), Giovanni Bellini's Sacred Allegory (1490-1500), Poussin's Massacre of the Innocents (c.1630) and Degas' Little Dancer of Fourteen Years (c.1881). AES+F take this rich art historical precedent and inject it with a twenty-first century aesthetic savvy that conjures up the signifiers and referents of our everyday visual experience, themselves citing George Lucas' Star Wars' epic and Paul Verhoeven's film Starship Troopers as crucial influences in their output. In sum, AES+F represent a formidable force of creative invention who have demonstratively succeeded and very much continue in redefining the possibilities of spectator reaction and experience in the new millennium.

 

Action Half-Life

Belonging to the epic cycle Action Half-Life, the present work is a highly-resolved paragon of the creative vivacity and technical perfection that stands at the heart of AES+F's digital collage. For this series, AES+F combined photographs of landscapes of the Sinai desert, which were reminiscent of George Lucas' Star Wars films, and then shot child-models holding cardboard tubes, which were later replaced with virtual weapons. As explained by the artists themselves, by photographing the child models individually and assembling them digitally, AES+F have "sought to achieve an atmosphere reminiscent of Sacred Allegory by Gian Lorenzo Bellini (FIG. 2). This method is not unlike the technology used by old masters painting a canvas when etudes of models, landscapes, details and surroundings were painted separately and then transferred to a large single canvas, gradually developing into the composition" (cited in: "'A Brave New World' AES+F: Oleysya Turkina interviews AES+F Group", in Exhibition Catalogue, St Petersburg, The Ludwig Museum in the Russian Museum, AES: AES+F, 2006, p. 10). Perhaps most obviously jarring in the individuality of the figures here is the direction of their eyes: shot in isolation the characters previously-fixed stares appear now to be dislocated and directionless, rather than focused on anything in particular. Consequently the atmosphere is replete with the resident pathos that signposts the very special nature of their digital creations.