AES+F: Tondo #23 (sarjasta Viimeinen mellakka 2), 2007 © Courtesy Triumph Gallery, Moscow © AES+F

The theme of the Helsinki Art Museum summer exhibition is the future. Where will we go from here? Will over-consumption result in the planet's destruction? Will we create Utopian worlds for ourselves, or will things develop more or less along a normal course? While addressing serious issues, Happy End? also provides hope, bubbling humour and a dash of irony.

AES+F

The upper floor of the museum is taken over by AES+F (Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, Evgeny Svyatsky + Vladimir Fridkes), a Russian art collective who have garnered acclaim across the world with their photographs, videos and artworks that merge mythology with harsh contemporary reality. In the group’s works, smooth-skinned teenage warriors point huge guns at the sky and hybrids of a baby and a lizard join innocence with depravity. The Feast of Trimalchio is a video piece in which people continue their worldly lives regardless of disasters. AES+F dress up their message in a stunningly beautiful visual form. The aesthetic experience is intensified by the glorious soundtrack of the piece.

The solo exhibition AES+F has been realized as a collaboration between Helsinki Art Museum and the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow. Co-curated by Olga Sviblova and Helsinki Art Museum.

The Feast of Trimalchio, AES+F, 2009 © Courtesy Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow. Curated by Olga Sviblova		Last Riot, Sculptures, Composition #3 (2 Girls), AES+F, 2008 © Courtesy Shalva Breus' collection

Nine contemporay artists

On the museum’s lower floor, nine Finnish and international artists explore the depths of the human psyche and the chasms between luxury and everyday life. Jani Leinonen’s tombstones provoke consumption hysteria. Harri Pälviranta brings us face-to-face with school shooters. Timo Wright depicts human mortality and arrogant greed. Duncan Butt Juvonen utters 7000 apologies from the wallpaper. Kim Simonsson’s sculptures play a game in which honesty competes with cunning. In her animation installations,

Reetta Neittaanmäki explores the boundary between the public and private sphere. Reetta Hiltunen challenges the Happy Families role models. Cherry/Studio Killers presents Cherry, a virtual pop singer and restless muse, who claims we are all misled. Joksu + Mirror Project Team play with our sense of place. The Mirror immerses us in two places simultaneously. Here Cherry can also be caught making an appearance.

Duncan Butt Juvonen: So Sorry, 2013 (yksityiskohta) © Duncan Butt Juvonen		Jani Leinonen: Death of Brillo (sarjasta Death of Capitalism), 2012 © Vilhelm Sjöström. Courtesy of Showroom Helsinki.

The Happy End? exhibition resumes outside the Tennis Palace

On the square in front of the museum, three gigantic glossy black statues by AES+F – Angels-Demons No 3 and 4 and First Rider – point the way to the genesis of a new world.

An installation by Jani Leinonen in the Kommentti display space at platform-level at Kamppi metro station takes a stand on our consumer habits. The logos in the We Are Sorry light panel crystallise modern urban corporate ethics into one hot topical slogan.

Joksu + Mirror Project Team’s spatial twin Mirror can be experienced in the new Kaisa House, the main library of the University of Helsinki.

AES+F: Enkeli-Demoni #3, 2009 © AES+F © AES+F, 2009, Courtesy of Triumph Gallery, Moscow and Volker Diehl Gallery, Berlin		AES+F: Enkeli-Demoni #4, 2009 © AES+F © AES+F, 2009, Courtesy of Triumph Gallery, Moscow and Volker Diehl Gallery, Berlin