Gia Rigvava, and AES Group
Nikita Gashunin was born in 1956 in Moscow. Studied in Moscow Pedagogical Institute. Exhibitions since1977. Took part in group exhibitions and art fares in many countries in Europe, the USA and Japan. Solo exhibitions in Moscow in 1991and 1992, and in Chigaco in1994.
Savadov & Senchenko, Kiev, Ukraine was born in 1962. Georgii Senchenko, Kiev, Ukraine was born in 1962.Graduated from Kiev Academy of Art 1986. Exhibitions in Russia, Europe and the USA.
Gia Rigvava was born in 1956 in Tbilisi. Graduated from Moscow International Relations Institute in 1978 and Surikov Art Institute in Moscow in 1986. Started creative activities in 1987. Active participant in artistical processes in Moscow in Post-soviet time - from 1992. One of the most visible figures in the Russian art in the 90's.
AES Group (Tatjana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, Yevgeni Svjatskin) The artists got together as a group in 1987. Tatyana Arzamazova, born 1955. Graduated from Moscow Architecture Institute in 1978, worked on conceptual architecture. Got Grand Prize in competition "Theatre of the Future" by OISTT and UNESCO. Took part in exhibitions of conceptual architecture in London, Paris, Venice. (Tatjana Arzamasova, Lef Evzovich, Yevgeni Svjatskin)
In Russia, a peculiar relationship between art and new technology has always been predominant: think only of Levsha, the left-handed smith of Russian folklore, whoknew how to shoe a flea, but with the help of technology that was primitive indeed.
The technical innovations were regarded as follies, something one really did not believe in. For a long time, the theory of N.Wiener was looked upon as a bourgeois pseudo-science; which is why the concept of new technology had an overtone of idealist philosophy. Even in the 70's, a normal audio magnetophone was considered dissident. The possibility of manipulating information with technology was the priviledge of the State. The only official centra for new technology were provided by corporations of the military complex. This is why "Conversion" became synonymous for the "Eastern way" as opposed to the "Western way".
Nikita Gashunin's work "Global Ambitions", a sculpture filled with electronics and microprocessors, symbolizes a technical miracle put together from debris in the backyard. The moving sculpture reminds us of the phenomenal gift of the Russians to turn unusual the commonplace.
The works of Savadov & Senchenko unite the two directions of Conversion: to recycle Army property and to exploit the technology developed in the military factories.
As stated above, information technology was considered a medium only for propaganda, oppression, and conceit. Gia Rigvava's works "You can trust me" and" You are powerless" start from this notion. "You can trust me" uses the genre of the"talking head", sublimating the characters of massmedia: Jesus, Terminator, Gorbachev.
The relation of man and technology is revealed in the work of the AES Group (Tatjana Arzamasova, Lef Evzovich, Yevgeni Svjatskin). The work demonstrates the impossibility of organically uniting man with tehcnology: a tank, whose body has been dissected with the aid of computer, is being reclad into human skin.