Alias Group show featuring Ilya and Emilia Kabakov at M Leuven, Belgium

M presents ‘Alias’, a group exhibition on a growing phenomenon in recent art history: fictional artists. The exhibition brings together some 80 artworks from national and international public and private collections in an unprecedented display. It will span five galleries. Piece by piece, the works illustrate the strategies contemporary artists use to conflate fiction and reality, and how they confound our perception of the truth.

A fictional artist is more than just a pseudonym. It is the deliberate construction of an artistic persona with an invented biography that differs, to a greater or lesser extent, from the creator’s own. Moreover, fictional artists can equally well constitute a collective – just as the artists who invent them can have both individual and collective identities.

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov are best known for their pioneering 'total installations', which completely immerse the viewer in a dramatic, constructed environment. These installations, together with paintings and works on paper, are informed by their shared Soviet background but also engage with universal themes such as personal or collective memory, fantasy and illusion. Often populated by fictional characters, their works draw upon the optimistic idealisation of Socialist Realist visual culture, which is sharply contrasted with the dreary reality of daily life in cramped communal apartments. While their visions of utopia are undercut with dark undercurrents of power and oppression, there is an inherent humanity and hope to these works that suggests the possibility of a brighter future.