AES+F: “The contemporary situation of the world is very close to the image of a chimera.”

I would like to ask you about the research you do. How much work is there behind a piece and how do you go about it exactly? Also, I imagine it is hard to be coherent as a group. Tell me a bit about your process.

Actually it’s very simple. We  just talk to each other and exchange ideas until we find The idea. When we discover it, we get to work and we divide up the roles because each of us has his or her own skills and preferences. The idea behind a group is that each member gets to do what he or she is best at.

The work is a construction of an art body from four points of view. An artwork has behind it a lot of different skills and general ideas. Everybody can look at it as a process, and can choose to stop it and take it  in new directions.

Your finished piece is totally integrated and it gives the impression of a wholly complete work. It is also interesting that you deliver such a piece without any moral judgement, especially considering it is actually about morality.

We give  the spectator the right to judge and have their own opinion. We have our own judgement but we are not a court. We are artists and of course we know what we have in our minds, but it’s better to give  the viewer these rights and to let them be free... But somehow we are also the judges, because there is a lot of humour in it.

Is it a parody?

It is a kind of a parody. But in each joke there is an element of seriousness.

And  glimpses of utopias and dystopias.

Yes, and also: (we must) be ironic, but be very thoughtful as well. We have to be always on this edge, on the border... This is our position.

Every artistic gesture is political. Do you agree?

We absolutely agree, it’s true. A political gesture can be articulated in different ways. It can be activism and, for us, such activism is the image, the moving image, the sculpture, the drawing. But we are never political in the sense that we never support ideas belonging to the so-called  left or right. Or fighting against the likes of Mr. Trump or whoever. At the same time, I think that the relationships between men and women are very political because they reveal issues of power. So this is more our game and what we are doing in this project. Allegories and metaphors.

You said you deal with images, with sculptures. There is a sort of a classical approach in your work. If you pause your film at any point, there is beauty in every image,  every frame has a pictorial quality.

In general, we believe in the aesthetic quality of art. This is essential: the visual has to be highly aesthetic. Otherwise we could just aș well read books or go to a peace march. But art has a privilege: the one of being visual, aesthetical. Amongst the public there are those who just like our images, and there are those who are irritated by the beauty of the images.

But the reality you show is rather grotesque. You play with all these different categories of media imagery. All the references you have in your pieces, from art history to video games, television,  and advertising.  These feel  like traps you have set for me, as a spectator...

It is the visual field which surrounds us, contemporary people. We are living in a field of images. It’s our meal. There is no difference for us between a Caravaggio and a video game. What has energy and fresh blood is interesting to us. 

Thinking of fresh blood and vampires, do you feed yourself with new images? What does your process of research look like?

When we start a new project, we search for an enormous bank of images. For example, for this project we were interested in researching the imagery of homeless people, which is different in every country. We tried to offer a global image of poverty. Also, we were interested in people’s warm feelings towards their pets. There are plenty of photos of cats on social media and we used them to create our images of chimeras.

Why chimeras?

We are interested in this unrealistic aspect that the image of the chimera provides… chimeras are an impossible combination of qualities that coexist in a unique creature. There are very famous chimeras in the history of art. They are mutants and hybrids. We think that the contemporary situation of the world is very close to this image… For us, chimeras are a metaphor for contemporary ideology and humanity. Plus, many people live in their own chimeras, exchanging their chimeric ideas. 

You all live in Russia, but did you ever think of leaving the country?

We travel a lot. Maybe one day we will change the country in which we live and, if we do, it will be very organic for us. It is a difficult question. Probably if we will leave, we will take our chimeras on our heads and go…

Going back to your beginnings, the group started in 1987, you come from different areas, why did you decide to start this art group? Was it your own way of resisting?

1987 was the end of the Soviet system. The art scene was very clear back then: there was official art and there was the underground. There were two hierarchies. And we never belonged to either of them. When the system was somehow destroyed, that was the point when we decided to start. So it was not resistance, it was the opposite. It was our attempt to be artists of the open society. …To start from a white page.

Do you feel right now that you are very much part of the Russian art scene?

We are well-known in Russia and we have our own role there. But I think that for us what is more important is the work we are doing and that we are artists. After that comes the importance of the fact that we are Russians… We are quite cosmopolitan.

And your works are not particularly Russian…

I don’t know. They are not Russian in the sense of exoticism: we are not showing some sort of Russian origin but we think that some characteristics of expression are really Russian. The way of observing is Russian. Coming from the place of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin or Tolstoy's War and Peace is important to us. Absolutely chimeric visions of the world are typical Russian… That’s where the scale we use comes from.

Your video reminds me of mural painting, of frescoes. You somehow remind us of art’s origins, but through video art.

It’s true. But we also refer to video games, films and to… trash. Global trash. But the canons of art – invented centuries ago – are still essential today. They are universal for images and they continue to function. So we just follow the ideas of the great artists from the past!

Why do you think it’s important to include sketches, sculptures, and underlying layers in your exhibitions? Why not only the final cut, the final piece?

Because there is never a final piece! If we are thinking of any idea, it has so many different steps. Everything could be a painting or a sculpture. The drawings we do are created after the video is finished.

The process of copying your own work in another medium can equate to detaching yourself from it, to be able to see it from above.

But this is not copying. It is the fantasy after the work. You can go to a museum to see some pictures and then afterward you can develop what you have seen with the help of fantasy. The drawings we do are a separate work.

Did you ever exhibit in other museums apart from art museums?

Yes, we did, in an art and science museum, the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen.

Elements of your videos look as if they are taken from old encyclopedias or cabinets of curiosities. Do they come from there?

Somehow, Inverso Mundus refers also to the Book of Miracles.

What are you working on now?

We are always working and thinking about something. The problem is that if you come up with a big project, you need a big budget. So this is the process: we are thinking and we are looking for finance. This is our permanent lifestyle.

Interview by Daria Ghiu

Editing and proofreading by Emmet Cooke

Images courtesy of AES+F , Triumph Gallery and Mobius Gallery