Aes+F. the Feast of Trimalchio

AES+F. ‘THE FEAST OF TRIMALCHIO’

14.07.17 – 17.09.17. Aljub of Es Baluard

Every summer Es Baluard invites an international artist to present a thematic project in the Aljub; thus, after the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn, in 2017, a year when we are focusing on currents and transformations of the phenomenon of tourism, it is the Russian collective AES+F, comprised of Tatiana Arzamasova (1955), Lev Evzovich (1958), Evgeny Svyatsky (1957) and Vladimir Fridkes (1956) who bring one of their most complex works to Mallorca, situated between hyperrealism and the fantastic, the seductive and the critical: The Feast of Trimalchio.

Keys of the exhibition:

First individual exhibition of the collective Russian AES+F in a Spanish museum and bet of Es Baluard for this summer.
Suppose a continuation to the dedication to the analysis of the tourism that the museum brings since the start of the project ‘Ciutat de vacances’.
It presents in a video work in 3D how a spectacular and excessive interpretation of the banquet of Trimalchio that takes as a point of split an imaginary island that houses a resort of luxury where find all the possible landscapes, how a paradise of payment the architecture of which remit to milestones of the classical painting.
AES+F is a collective artistic formed in 1987 and integrated by three Russian artists, Tatiana Arzamasova (1955), Lev Evzovich (1958) and Evgeny Svyatsky (1957), to which joins Vladimir Fridkes (1956) in 1995, moment in which adopt the name of AES+F.
The group investigates its creative proposals from various media such as photography, video and animation, as well as with more traditional ones, painting, drawing and sculpture.

Es Baluard Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Palma

EXHIBITION TITLE: AES+F. The Feast of Trimalchio.

CURATOR: Nekane Aramburu.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

AES+F: Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, Evgeny Svyatsky & Vladimir Fridkes

Anton Svyatsky, Dmitry Khankin, George Arzamasov

Multimedia Art Museum Moscow

Triumph Gallery, Russia

More information:

Every summer Es Baluard invites an international artist to present a thematic project in the Aljub space; thus, after the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn, in 2017, a year when we are focusing on currents and transformations of the phenomenon of tourism, it is the Russian collective AES+F, comprised of Tatiana Arzamasova (1955), Lev Evzovich (1958), Evgeny Svyatsky (1957) and Vladimir Fridkes (1956) who bring one of their most complex works to Mallorca, situated between hyperrealism and the fantastic, the seductive and the critical: The Feast of Trimalchio.

The Feast of Trimalchio (2009-2010)

A videographic work in 3D as a spectacular, excessive interpretation of the feast of Trimalchio based on an imaginary island that houses a luxury resort where all possible landscapes are found, like a kind of paying paradise with architecture reminiscent of landmarks of classical painting. The guests that land on it encounter a human ecosystem of assorted cultures and races where guests and hosts, servers and served are immersed in a role play and pursuit of pleasures somewhere between the tragic and the absurd. In ‘The Feast of Trimalchio’, ideology, history and ethics converge in a utopian setting, considered from a surrealist, extreme perspective based on the combination of pleasure and leisure with hyper-consumerism.

Trimalchio is the name of a character from the Roman work of fiction Satyricon by Petronius, an arrogant former slave who becomes rich and appears in the part entitled “Cena Trimalchionis” (“Banquet of Trimalchio”, often translated as “Dinner with Trimalchio”). Like a Jay Gatsby in his excessive parties, the absence of the same situates the spectator in the choreography between the members of this strange resort anchored in an imprecise time where anything is possible.

This group of artists has been working together since the late ‘eighties and their work is characterised by the use of digital effects and high-technology treatment mixing languages of advertising, popular culture, the most famous myths or classical painting, to pose different questions on contemporary society where violence, war or the drift towards mass consumerism are some of the problems set forth.

For the first time in a museum institution in Spain, Es Baluard presents an individual exhibition dedicated to the Russian collective AES+F. In addition, the exhibition coincides with the collective display “Ciutat de vacances”,a production that is similarly complex and multifaceted based on the subject of tourism.

This exhibition can be visited in the Aljub of Es Baluard from the 14 of July to the September 17, 2017.

WORK

(Text by the collective AES+F)

In the Satiricon, the work of Gaius Petronius Arbitrator, the great genius and melancholy lyric poet of the reign of Nero, the most celebrated part is "The banquet of Trimalchionis." Thanks to the fantasy of Petronio, the name of Trimalchio has become synonymous with wealth, luxury, gluttony and unbridled pleasure. In this feast, the decadence, which Petronius describes so masterly, contrasts with the brevity of human existence.

We decided to try to find an analogous character in the third millennium, and Trimalchio, the freedman, the "rich new" who hosts banquets lasting several days, appeared in our imagination not so much as an individual but as a collective image of a luxurious Hotel, a temporary paradise in which one has to pay to enter.

The guests of the hotel, the "masters", come from the wealthy West, from the land of the Golden Billion. Regardless of the season, they are eager to be guests of the current Trimaltion, which has created the most exotic and luxurious hotel possible. Miraculously, the hotel combines a tropical coast with a ski resort.

The "masters" wear white, evoking at the same time the uniform of the righteous in the garden of Eden, traditional colonial costumes and a summer fashion collection. The "masters" possess all the characteristics of the human race and among them we find all ages, typologies and social origins. In the piece we find the professor of the University, the stockbroker, the beauty of the high society and the intellectual.

The "servants" of Trimalchio are young, attractive representatives of all the continents that work in the vast hospitality industry as cleaning staff, waiters, cooks, gardeners, security guards and masseurs. For their part, the "servants" are dressed in traditional uniforms with an ethnic touch, thus resembling the brightly colored angels of a garden of Eden to which the "masters" are admitted only temporarily.

On the one hand, it can be considered that the atmosphere of "The banquet of Trimalchio" embodies the hotel rituals of leisure and pleasure (massage and golf, swimming pool and surf) while, on the other hand, "servants" are more than mere Suppliers of an attentive service: they are participants in an orgy in which they realize any fantasy of the "masters", whether gastronomic or erotic. Sometimes the "masters" end unexpectedly in the role of "servants" and both groups become participants in an orgiastic reception of gala, a dinner in the style of the Roman Saturnales, in which the slaves, dressed as patricians, sit To the table and their masters, dressed in robes of slaves, serve them.

Ultimately, the pleasures of the "Trimalion banquet" are ruined by the irruption of the catastrophe, which is strained as an intruder into the Global Paradise.

BIOGRAPHY

AES+F is an artist collective formed as AES in 1987, by three Russian artists: Tatiana Arzamasova (1955), Lev Evzovich (1958), Evgeny Svyatsky (1957), and joined in 1995 by Vladimir Fridkes (1956), at which point the group was renamed to AES+F. The collective works in photography, video, and animation, as well as more traditional media, such as painting, drawing, and sculpture. AES+F's early work included performance, installation, painting, and illustration. Well known for their monumental video-art installations that Gareth Harris describes as "monumental painting set in motion", AES+F create grand visual narratives that explore contemporary global values, vices and conflicts.

AES+F began their career as AES Group, with Arzamasova, Evzovich, and Svyatsky forming a collective in 1987, and exhibiting internationally for the first time in 1989 with a solo show at Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston, and a performance at the Carpenter Center at Harvard University in Cambridge. The group expanded with the addition of the photographer Vladimir Fridkes in 1995 and subsequently changed its name to AES+F. The collective achieved worldwide recognition and acclaim in the Russian Pavilion at the 52nd Biennale di Venezia in 2007 with Last Riot (2007), the first in a trilogy of large-scale, multichannel video installations that have come to define the AES+F aesthetic. The second of the series, The Feast of Trimalchio (2009), appeared in Venice in 2009, and the third, Allegoria Sacra (2011), debuted at the 4th Moscow Biennale in 2011. Together, all three projects premiered as The Liminal Space Trilogy in September 2012 at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, and the Moscow Manege, the central exhibition hall of the artists’ home city. The Trilogy was shown in the Museum of Fine Arts in La Chaux-De-Fonds, Switzerland (June–September 2014). Most recently all three videos were shown at Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (June–September 2015). AES+F's newest project, Inverso Mundus, was presented at the 56th Venice Biennale as a collateral event at the Magazzini del Sale.

The group had more than 100 solo exhibitions at museums, exhibition spaces, and commercial galleries worldwide. AES+F works have been shown in such prestigious venues as the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (Berlin, 1995), ZKM (Karlsruhe, 2011), Casino Luxembourg (Luxembourg, 2006), Kiasma (Helsinki, 2006), the Moderna Museet (Stockholm, 1999), Tate Britain (London, 2007), Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva, various UK venues, 2003), the Passage De Retz (Paris, 2007), the Vanhaerents Art Collection (Brussels, 2013), MACRO Future (Rome, 2008), the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid, 2011), The State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, 2007), Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Moscow, 2008), Musée des Beaux-Arts (La Chaux-de-Fonds, 2014) and many others.

They have exhibited at numerous international festivals, namely the biennales of Venice, Lyon, Sydney, Gwangju, Moscow, Kiev, Lille, Havana, Melbourne, Istanbul, St. Moritz, Seoul, Kochi-Muziris, and many others. Their works appear in some of the world's most important collections, such as Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Musée de l’Élysée (Lausanne), MOCAK (Kraków), Sammlung Goetz (Munich), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), Art Gallery of South Australia (Adelaide), and the Museum of Old and New Art (Tasmania), Centre de Arte dos de Mayo (Madrid), Center Georges Pompidou (Paris), and the Louis Vuitton Foundation (Paris). Their work is represented in some of Russia's principal national museums, such as The State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), The State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), and the Multimedia Art Museum (Moscow).

AES+F received the Sergey Kuryokhin Award 2011, the main award of the Kandinsky Prize 2012, the main award of the NordArt Festival 2014, and the Pino Pascali Prize 2015 (18th Edition) – all for the project Allegoria Sacra.

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