AES group (Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, Eugeny Svyatsky) appeared in 1987. Its first work was graphical staging of Anatoly Vasilyev’s performance “Serso” (Theatre on Taganka). They showed their works at Guelman Gallery, XL Gallery, participated in Photobiennale ’96 and Photobiennale ’98 and in the Festival in Tsarskoye Selo. During the last years they worked in Switzerland, Austria, the USA, France, Germany.
Recent personal exhibitions:
1996 - “Moscow - Berlin, after that everywhere...”, Guelman Gallery, Moscow
1997 - “AES TravelAgency to theFuture”, 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 participatein 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”, “A Yellow One Is Cooking, a 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
A Yellow One Is Cooking, a 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 phtocollages 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 culturres. 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”.

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