AES+F: THE FEAST OF TRIMALCHIO
4 December 2010 - 6 March 2011
AES+F: The Feast of Trimalchio, a new-media artwork previously shown at the Venice
Biennale 2009, is a large-scale digital video installation which retells Petronius’s epic poem from
the Satyricon for a twenty-first century audience. Using the imagery of high fashion, cinema,
lifestyle magazines and luxury design,
The Feast of Trimalchio is an unrestrained indulgence of wealth and pleasure. Set in a
luxury hotel on an artificially constructed island paradise, the guests and staff change roles to
live out their gastronomic and erotic fantasies. Despite the hotel's endless pleasures, anxiety,
inequality, and disaster continually threaten to destroy this very contemporary vision of paradise.
The AES+F Group comprises four Russian artists. Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovitch and Evgeny
Svyatsky have collaborated as AES since 1987 and have worked with photographer Vladimir Fridkes
since 1995 (AES+F Group). Arzamasova and Evzovitch are graduates of Moscow Architectural Institute,
Svyatskiy is a graduate of Moscow University of Printing Arts, and Fridkes has been a fashion
photographer for Russian editions of
Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan and others. In collaboration,
their work has included photo-projects, video, sculptures and installations.
detail: AES+F, The Feast of Trimalchio, 2009, video still images. © AES+F Courtesy Triumph
Gallery, Moscow.
