AES+F Collective: Angels-Demons

Overview

If you attended the Sydney Biennale back in 2010, you’ll remember the most standout artwork: a huge video installation showing an eerie, digitally manipulated vision of a holiday resort, soundtracked by Beethoven. It was The Feast of Trimalchio (2009) masterminded by Russian art collective AES+F, and now they’re back in town with a new offering, Angels-Demons (2012). Active since 1989, this is AES+F’s first solo show in Sydney.

The angel-demons are 7 sculptures of colossal babies with bat wings and spined tails, each almost 2 metres tall with a gleaming black mirror finish. While their unnatural scale and demonic appendages are menacing, their postures are innocent: they’re learning to walk, reaching out with tentative hands, and flexing their wings. But what about when they grow up? AES+F describe the work as an “apocalyptic parade,” where the apocalypse heralded is not an end, but the beginning of an era where “evil may look good and vice versa.”