AES+F: The Last Riot

1st August 2008-27th September 2008

AES+F are Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, Evgeny Svyatsky and Vladimir Fridkes. Their video work ‘Last Riot’ (2007) was shown at the Russian Pavilion at last year’s Venice Biennale.  Mingling live actors and superbly realised computer animation, the film depicts nothing less than Armageddon, the last throes of a world in which teenagers spend their final moments mindlessly trying to kill each other with swords, baseball bats and golf clubs – all to a soundtrack of Wagner.

The works on canvas reflect the content of the video piece. The decadence of these images has been described as almost fetishistic and has draws parallels between the works of classic painters such as Caravaggio and the world of contemporary media such as computer graphics, television and advertising.The pristine white sculptures which accompany the work are represented as life size giant mutants, among them a girl who has grown a dinosaur’s tail, all wrestling above a miniature landscape of volcanoes and windmills.