Commedia dell'Arte in Crimea 2012

Arsen Savadov’s photograph, *Commedia dell’Arte in Crimea*, looks like the circus has come to town, but the players look lost, or maybe they’re just tired? Either way, the mood is melancholic. The colours are muted, the palette confined to sea blues, and greys of the boat. There’s so much artifice on display here, a layered theatricality, and the longer I look, the harder it is to work out what’s real and what’s not. It has the feel of a stage set, with props scattered around, and the whole thing feels as though it’s about to collapse. The eye is drawn to the diamond pattern which recurs on the sails of the ‘fish’. They are so fake and flamboyant, it looks like a child’s game. Savadov’s image reminds me of Jeff Wall’s constructed images, but it’s closer in spirit to the work of the Russian performance artist, Oleg Kulik. Like Kulik, Savadov is interested in staging absurd situations to challenge the status quo. It embraces ambiguity and multiple interpretations over fixed or definitive meanings.