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EVENT DESCRIPTION
With City of Chimeras, the Russian art collective AES+F extends its conceptual exploration of Inverso Mundus (World upside down), delving deeper into the symbolic and cultural implications of the chimera. Historically, the chimera has been associated with hybridity and monstrosity, a creature composed of disparate animal forms that, in classical mythology, signified both physical threat and metaphysical transgression. Over time, this image has evolved from a representation of chaos and danger to a broader metaphor for illusion, unattainable aspirations, and the instability of identity. AES+F’s latest series reinterprets this mythological being not as an object of fear, but as a familiar and even endearing presence—an approach that challenges traditional conceptions of beauty, normality, and the aesthetic integration of the monstrous into the everyday.
AES+F’s artistic practice has long been defined by a fusion of classical and contemporary visual languages, and City of Chimeras continues this tradition. The paintings in this series, unique oil-on-canvas works, originate from the broader Inverso Mundus project, a multimedia endeavor that merges live human figures with digitally generated imagery. This hybridization of artistic methodologies mirrors the conceptual themes of the work: just as the chimera embodies a collision of disparate forms, AES+F’s technique collapses traditional oil painting into a digital aesthetic, creating a visual language that is simultaneously archaic and futuristic. The result is a liminal aesthetic space, in which past and present, myth and reality, materiality and immateriality converge.
The absorption of the monstrous into quotidian life has been a recurrent theme in literature, philosophy, and the visual arts. AES+F’s work resonates with Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915), in which Gregor Samsa’s inexplicable transformation into an insect is met not with existential dread but with pragmatic adaptation. The horror of his new form is gradually normalized within the domestic sphere, underscoring how the grotesque, when confronted repeatedly, loses its power to shock and instead becomes embedded within the structures of daily life. This process of normalization is central to City of Chimeras, where AES+F presents fantastical hybrid creatures not as anomalies but as extensions of contemporary subjectivity. By domesticating the chimera, the collective reflects on the ways in which modern society assimilates its own illusions, desires, and distortions, integrating them into the visual and cultural landscape.
The exhibition also engages with a broader philosophical discourse on the nature of transformation, illusion, and paradox. AES+F’s work can be situated within a lineage of artists who have interrogated the aestheticization of the grotesque, from Hieronymus Bosch’s fantastical visions of hybrid creatures in The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1490–1510) to Francisco Goya’s Los Caprichos (1797–98), which satirized the social and political chimeras of his time. And we can’t miss to observe that for decades the collective’s hyper-stylized compositions anticipated the digital surrealism of contemporary visual culture, in which AI-generated imagery blurs the boundaries between reality and simulation. The chimera, in this context, becomes not just a mythological reference but a reflection of the unstable nature of contemporary identity, where digital avatars, virtual personas, and algorithmic constructs redefine the parameters of selfhood.
At its core, City of Chimeras is an exploration of the contradictions inherent in the contemporary moment. By transforming creatures of danger into icons of adoration, AES+F subverts the traditional dynamics of fear and attraction, revealing a world in which instability and contradiction are not only tolerated but embraced. Just as Kafka’s Samsa exists in a perpetual state of in-betweenness, neither fully human nor fully insect, neither entirely rejected nor wholly accepted, the chimeras of AES+F occupy a liminal space in which categories dissolve and new possibilities emerge. This exhibition challenges viewers to reconsider their own perceptions of beauty, horror, and transformation, positioning the chimera as an emblem of the fluid, hybrid, and ever-evolving nature of contemporary existence.
ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER
First formed as AES Group in 1987 by Arzamasova, Evzovich, and Svyatsky, the collective became AES+F when Fridkes joined in 1995. AES+F work at the intersection of traditional media, photography, video and digital technologies. They define their practice as a kind of "social psychoanalysis" through which they reveal and explore the values, vices and conflicts of contemporary global culture.AES+F achieved worldwide recognition and acclaim in the Russian Pavilion at the 52nd Biennale di Venezia in 2007 with Last Riot (2007), their first multi-channel video installation. The following two projects, The Feast of Trimalchio (2009), and Allegoria Sacra (2011), were also shown at the biennales of Venice, Moscow, and others. AES+F presented their newest multi-channel video project, Inverso Mundus (2015), at the 56th Biennale di Venezia, 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennial, 1st Bangkok Biennial, and others.
The group had more than 100 solo exhibitions at museums, exhibition spaces, and commercial galleries worldwide. AES+F works have been shown in such venues as the ZKM (Karlsruhe), HAM (Helsinki), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Tate Britain (London), MAXXI and MACRO Future (Rome), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Leeum Samsung Museum of Art (Seoul), The State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow), National Gallery of Australia (Canberra), Faena Art Center (Buenos Aires), and many others.
Their works appear in some of the world's principal collections of contemporary art, such as the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Multimedia Art Museum, National Center for Contemporary Art (Moscow), State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), MOCAK (Krakow), CCA Ujazdowski Castle (Warsaw), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Art Gallery of South Australia (Adelaide), MONA (Hobart), Sammlung Goetz (Munich), Vanhaerents Art Collection (Brussels), Taguchi Art Collection (Tokyo), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Thoma Foundation (Chicago), Nomas Foundation (Rome), Pino Pascali Museum (Polignano-a-Mare), CA2M (Madrid), Wien Museum (Vienna), Art Museum of Northern Norway (Tromso), Les Abattoirs (Toulouse), Nam June Paik Art Center (Yongin), European Center of Photography, Centre Pompidou, Louis Vuitton Foundation (Paris), and many others.
