AES+F Inverso Mundus

Shown at the 56th Venice Biennial, the panoramic video «Inverso Mundus» is a delirious and absurd interpretation of the series of 16th-century historical engravings, «Inverso Mundus» (The World Upside Down), through filmed episodes of contemporary life. Characters are acting out scenes of absurd social utopias, changing their masks, morphing from beggars into rich men – from policemen into thieves. Metrosexual cleaners shower the city with debris. Female inquisitors torture men on IKEA-style devices. Children and seniors are locked in a kick-boxing match. The film depicts a world where chimeras are pets and the Apocalypse is entertainment. AES+F AES+F is an artist collective formed as AES in 1987, by three Russian artists – Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, and Evgeny Svyatsky, and joined in 1995 by Vladimir Fridkes, at which point the group was renamed

AES+F. Tatiana was born in 1955 in Moscow, where she graduated from Moscow Architectural Institute (MARCHI) – State Academy in 1978. Prior to founding AES Group, Tatiana was a conceptual architect. She participated in conceptual architecture exhibitions in London, Paris, and Venice. Lev was born in 1958 in Moscow, where he graduated from Moscow Architectural Institute in 1982. Prior to founding AES Group, Lev also worked in conceptual architecture. He participated in conceptual architecture exhibitions in Milan, Frankfurt-on-Main, and Paris.

Lev also worked as an art director in film. Evgeny was born in 1957 in Moscow, where he graduated from Moscow University of Print Design in 1980. Prior to founding AES Group, Evgeny worked in book illustration, advertising, and graphic design. Evgeny also worked as a creative director for publishing houses in Moscow. Vladimir was born in Moscow in 1956, where he worked as a fashion photographer prior to joining the collective. His work was published in many leading fashion magazines: VOGUE, Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Sunday Times Style and others. The artist collective works in photography, video, and animation, as well as more traditional media, such as painting, drawing, sculpture and architecture.

AES+F’s early work included performance, installation art, painting, and illustration. Well-known for their monumental video-art installations that Gareth Harris of The Art Newspaper describes as «monumental painting set in motion», AES+F create largevisualfrescoes that explore contemporary global values, vices and conflicts, all while deploying a sophisticated, poetic dialogue among these media and plumbing the depths of art history and other cultural canons. Berlin 5 AES+F’s workhas been exhibited at numerous international festivals – namely,at ARS-06 at Kiasma in Helsinki and at the biennales of Venice, Lyon, Sydney, Gwangju, Moscow, Gothenburg, Havana, Tirana, Istanbul, Bratislava, Seoul etc. Their works belong to some of the world’s most important collections : at theModern Musesum in Stockholm, the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krákow (MOCAK),the Sammlung Goetz Museum in Munich, the ZKM (Center for Art and Media) in Karlsruhe,the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide, the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania, the Centre de Arte dos de Mayo in Madrid, andthe Maison Européenne de la Photographie, the Center Georges Pompidou, and the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.

Their work is represented by some of Russia’s most important national museums, such as The State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), The State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), and the Multimedia Art Museum (Moscow). They won the Bronze Medal from Russian National Academy of Fine Arts in 2005, the Sergey Kuryokhin Award in 2011, the Kandinsky Prize in 2012, the Gold Medal from Russian National Academy of Fine Arts in 2013, the NordArt-Prize in 2014, and the Pino Pascali Prize in 2015.