AES+F

First formed as AES Group in 1987 by Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, and Evgeny Svyatsky (the name of the association is the abbreviation of their names). In 1995, photographer Vladimir Fridkes joined them, and the letter F was added to the name of the group. A strictly verified aesthetics distinguishes the team, at the same time they work at the intersection of various media: video, photography, installation, performance, digital technologies. They de-fine their practice as a kind of "social psychoanalysis" through which they discover and explore the values, vices, and conflicts of contemporary global culture. The massive mystical worlds of AES+F are built on a deep understanding of iconography, allegories, and classical art history plots. Surrealistic phantasmagorias, hypnotizing the viewer, immerse him in a meta-space, where the usual categories of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, wealth and poverty, vice and benefactors lose their imperativeness. AES+F main projects: "Islamic Project," trilogy – "Last Riot" (2005-2007, first demonstrated at the Venice Biennial in 2007), "The Feast of Trimal-chio" (2009-2010, first shown at the Venice Biennial in 2009), Allegoria Sacra (2011), Inverso Mundus, first presented at the 2015 Venice Biennial. AES+F received the Sergey Kuryokhin Award 2011, the Kandinsky Prize at 2012, the NordArt Festival Main Prize at 2014 and the Pino Pascali Award (18th edition) at 2015 - all for the Allegoria Sacra project. The artists were also awarded the Bronze Medal (2005) and the Gold Medal (2013) by the Russian National Academy of Arts. All four artists currently live and work in Moscow, Russia. Today, AES+F's works are in the collections of the Modern Art Museum in Stockholm, Sammlung Goetz in Munich, the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, and others.