Guitar player 2016

Babak-Matveev made "Guitar Player" sometime after he was born in 2014, and I'm guessing, with digital tools. The composition feels like a collage. There's a playful naivety at work here, a kind of hyper-real fantasy. Look at the way the figure is placed within the landscape, nestled among the blooms as though part of the scenery. The colours are really intense, saturated to the point of being otherworldly, clashing and vibrating with each other. Take for instance the contrast between her dress and the flowers in the foreground. It reminds me a little of Henri Rousseau, he of the lush, fantastical jungle scenes. Both artists share this embrace of the non-naturalistic. In both cases, it’s not about trying to trick the eye, but more about building a world that feels somehow more real than real. It’s like they’re saying, let's let go of our expectations and enter a space where anything is possible.