Arario Gallery Beijing is proud to host the second exhibition by the Russian artist group AES+F from September 4th to October 24th, 2010. As a continuation of their first 2008 exhibition at the gallery, which presented a 3-channel-video installation titled Last Riot 2, this exhibition features The Feast of Trimalchio, a 9-channel video installation projected in a giant circular room with a 16-meter-diameter, and a series of large format digital pictures. As The Feast of Trimalchio was shown in the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, this exhibition will provide an opportunity for the audience to meditate on their Biennale-scale works.
The title of the exhibition The Feast of Trimalchio, which is also the title of the video and the large format digital pictures shown in the exhibition, derives from an episode of Satyricon, a novel by Gaius Petronius Arbiter, a witty lyrical poet who lived in the time of Emperor Nero in ancient Rome. This episode about Trimalchio, the shallow-minded show-off nouveau riche, is a satirical portraiture of the greedy man in the time of Emperor Nero. The artists project the frame of this story to the contemporary society of consumerism and materialism and reflect the Trimalchio to the contemporary generation who regards consumption as the highest valued thing.
The story takes the form of a collage of 5-star hotels, luxury resorts and golf clubs that represents wealth and pleasure, unfolding on an isolated island in the middle of the ocean like a temporary paradise. People of high-class social status of different races are dressed in white, and they arrive on this island on a cruise to enjoy the endless feast. Greeting them are housekeeping staff, waiters, chefs, gardeners, security guards and masseurs who are dressed in all kinds of traditional clothes. Like the Trimalchio of the 21st century, people in white enjoy all kinds of leisure activities as the guest and master of the hotel, and the hotel workers watch their every movement for unbridled pleasure, like their servants. At first it’s very clear to distinguish the server from the served, and the provider from the consumer. However, it gradually becomes unclear as to who is the customer and who is the staff, and it seems meaningless to even classify and regulate their social roles and duties. In the end, they come to portray the contemporary man, busy drinking and feasting to his heart’s content and transforming into a materialistic being trying to quench the greed.
This place where gluttony, wealth, sexual fantasy and all kinds of human greed are realized is a place of The Feast and Global Paradise. Anyone can enter this place if they have money, despite their race, class or nationality, and social status can instantly change with money, transforming the servant yesterday into a guest and master today. Here, one’s wealth determines the criterion of one’s capability and classifies the mainstream and the non-mainstream in the society, and those who have and those who have not. It reflects the contemporary society of a new hierarchical system, a perfect capitalistic society in which money determines all.
