AES group (Tatyana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovitch, Evgeny Svyatsky; founded in 1987) is a triumvirate of energetic and progressive artists intent on creating works, which might be considered as "politically incorrect", touching such themes such as violence, body, and Westernization.

"Political correctness is too often a form of censorship", – they once stated in an unpublished article by an American artist Archie Galents in connection with their most famous work "Islamic Project. AES – The Witnesses of the Future". The project was widely covered by media and shown, often under the name of "AES Travel Agency to the Future", at numerous venues such as Neue Galerie Studio, Graz, Austria (1997), Festival Atlantico-99, Lisbon, Portugal (1999), SIETAR Europe Congress 2000, Brussels, Belgium, Jean-Marc Patras – N.O.M.A.D.E., Paris, France (2000), and Galerie Sollertis, Toulouse, France (2001).

"The AES artists assume that they work in the world of totally deconstructive oppositions and destroyed boundaries where the polarization of the East and the West – which remained the most important ideological foundation of so called modern art (the art of the post-World War II period) – has been lost." (E. Dyegot. "The End of the Evidence", 1997).

Solo exhibitions include "The Art of the Possible" (M. Guelman Gallery, Moscow, 1993), "Family Portrait in the Interior" (XL Gallery, Moscow, 1995), "The Yellow One is Cooking, the White One is Eating", Art Media Center "TV Gallery", Moscow (1998), "AES Nomade makes stop in New York", Art in General, New York (1999), "Le Roi des Aulnesa", Galerie Knoll, Vienna, Austria (2002).

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

1996   "Moscow – Berlin, after That Everywhere...", Guelman Gallery, Moscow

1997   "AES Travel Agency to the Future", Neue Galerie, Graz, Austria
"AES Today", Warsaw

1998   "Three Penny Show", Rutgers University, USA

GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS:

1996   Kristoff Merian Schtiftung, Switzerland

1997   Cite des Arts of Paris City Council, France

1998   Rutgers University, USA

Many of their works are in private collections in Germany, England, USA, museums Neue Galerie (Graz), Hovard Ezersky (Boston), Lewis Pollock (Santa Fe), Moscow House of Photography. In the near future exhibitions at Odessa Cold Academy (Ukraine), Belgrad Festival of Contemporary Art (Serbia), Oakland Contemporary Art Center (New Zealand) are being planned, exhibition "The Day of Judgement" in Warsaw and at the Contemporary Art School in Boston, they will also participate in the exhibition "Medialization" in Stockholm (Sweden).

c r i t i q u e

Matador, December 1998 (Freddy-Mercury)

AES group which has been existing on the art scene only for a few years and which began its work with the projects being pretty indistinct, such as huge photographs of a post-operation stitch, now chose a sensible strategy, i.e. to orient themselves not towards local market of actual art, but towards world one. Moreover, Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich and Evgeny Svyatsky manage to put this strategy into practice. Their "Islamic Project", "Children-Killers", "The Yellow One Is Cooking, the White One Is Eating" and other works you could read in "Matador" about, present European art of a pretty high level. The project "Who Wants to Live Forever" AES Group performed together with Vladimir Fridkis.

Itogy, June 2, 1998

The Yellow One Is Cooking, the White One Is Eating
AES Group
Art Media Center "TV Gallery"
Moscow

Being once quite a nice and intelligent group AES (Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich and Evgeny Svyatsky), which appeared during the work on graphic design of Anatoly Vasiliev’s show "Serso" considered to be cultic among Moscow intellectuals, not so long time back chose an artistic strategy of shock and provocation.
On the one hand, the AES made a few "bodily" installations whose heroes showed ripped throats and stomachs to the viewer. On the other hand, they travelled over half the world with their "Islamic Project", and with photocollages telling of a frightful future of America and Europe which are to fall under the hordes’ invasion from the East. Both in their physiological and geopolitical works the group used to speak in a very incorrect way on the topics usually undiscussable, i.e. on the inner things, be it either guts or cultural phobias (it must be said that actually the West is scared of Asian expansion, being ashamed to confess it).

The video installation at "TV Gallery" has combined the passions of AES: both physiology of geopolitics and geopolitics of physiology are before our eyes. The meeting point of seemingly uncrossing spheres is a splendid Chinese restaurant, the agent of that very expansion European gourmets are ready to submit to. It is hard to say who makes whom serve himself – either a white client uses the services of a yellow cook or vice versa. As known, the one who pays orders the music, but a client of a very expensive place called "Golden Dragon" has to listen to pretty odd howls of the Daocians.

Wandering along the hard and repulsive video of AES (close-up of a European endlessly chewing exotic food, and the hands of a Chinese making this very food), one thing can be said with determination, i.e. that the restaurant is not the place for convergence, this is rather the place of latent war between two cultures. And when frozen faces of the heroes appear for a few minutes on the screens, one feels something tense and warlike in them. Actually, the artists-provocators just pull out to the surface the fears and complexes of the viewer, leaving him alone with the latters in a darkened hall of "TV Gallery".