AES+F’S NEW YORK DEBUT IN SARGENT’S DAUGHTERS
Sargent’s Daughters is presenting the exhibition Inverso Mundus: Chimeras, the New York debut exhibition of internationally acclaimed Russian artist collective AES+F.
Inverso Mundus: Chimeras, will present a series of never-before-seen paintings, correlated to images and themes from Inverso Mundus, their video installation and performance work that premiered at the 56th Biennale di Venezia in 2015. This marks the first presentation of the group’s work to feature exclusively paintings. Produced in the style of the Old Masters, these works present the groundbreaking and challenging work of AES+F in a new medium for a new audience.
AES+F works in photography, video production, sculpture, and painting with the goal of creating large-scale narratives that explore our contemporary global landscape and its culture, vices, and values. First founded in the former Soviet Union in 1987, they have shown at major institutions across Europe, Asia, and the United States. Their painting practice, produced collectively in the group’s Berlin studio, employs hyper-realistic oil painting techniques to mimic the digital glossiness of their video and digital work, tethering their complex renderings to the two-dimensional and the handmade.
Inverso Mundus takes as its initial reference point the sixteenth-century Carnivalesque engravings in the genre of “world upside down,” an early form of populist social critique that emerged with the advent of the Gutenberg press. This body of work presents contemporary life turned “upside down,” depicting a tragi-comic apocalypse where social conventions are inverted to highlight the unspoken premises of our social contract. In the Chimeras series, various archetypes of contemporary life are portrayed cradling uncanny monsters on their laps like cherished pets. The series asks viewers to confront the monstrous contradictions we all hold dear in contemporary society.
In the wake of Putin’s re-election, the violence against dissidents such as Aleksei Navalny, and the recent amplified persecution of artists across Russia, AES+F’s critiques of the oligarchy, power, and military aggression are particularly pointed. Their public stance against the war in Ukraine has made them a target, and informed their decision to leave Moscow and relocate to Berlin in 2022. This exhibition brings AES+F’s groundbreaking and urgent work to New York, adding new context to the international conversation.
AES Groupwas first formed in 1987 in the former Soviet Union by Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, and Evgeny Svyatsky. The art collective became AES+F in 1995 with the addition of Vladimir Fridkes.The collective works in photography, video, sculpture, and painting, creating large-scale narratives that explore our contemporary global landscape and its culture, vices, and values.
Inverso Mundus: Chimeras. Exhibition by artist collective AES+F.
Sargent’s Daughters. 179 East Broadway, New York, NY 10002, United States.
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