AES+F's 'Inverso Mundus' at Tang Contemporary: Empty Shock

The Berlin-based Russian collective AES+F presents 'Inverso Mundus: City of Chimeras' at Tang Contemporary Art in Hong Kong from February 20 to March 20, 2025. The show centers on their 39-minute film 'Inverso Mundus' (2015), which animates stylized photographs and 3D renderings of absurd scenarios set to classical music by Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Liszt, and Bellini. The film depicts role reversals such as women placing men in metal stocks, old people boxing children, and women with mutant hybrids like a 'pugtopus' and a hairless cat with batwings. A scene showing police officers with Black and Brown civilians is described as tone-deaf. New oil paintings, including the 5m-wide 'Inverso Mundus, Celestial Cities of Chimeras' (2024), feature chimeras like two-headed 'sealdogs' and 'brainfish' with boars' bodies. Portraits of women and children with chimeras allude to elite wealth and commodification of nature. The review criticizes the work for lacking depth, calling it an empty performance of edginess that fails to explore power, race, or desire. The collective describes its practice as 'social psychoanalysis,' but the review argues the show merely presents glossy unreality borrowed from videogames and AI animation. The film debuted in 2015, and the new paintings replicate the same motifs, suggesting no evolution.