Vesuvio 3000 2015

Arsen Savadov made this fantastical painting, "Vesuvio 3000," with what looks like a mix of oil and maybe gouache, the colors are these hot, volcanic oranges and reds against a cooler set of blues, greens and browns in the birds and insects that fill the air. You can almost feel Savadov smearing and layering the paint to build up this chaotic scene of a city under duress. I imagine he’s painting fast, trying to keep up with the image as it emerges, shifting and changing, pushing and pulling. There's this sense of impending doom but also of fantastical escape, as if the world we know is transforming into something wilder, more imaginative. It reminds me of other painters who embrace the strange and surreal, like Leonora Carrington. Savadov, like Carrington, seems interested in exploring the boundaries between the real and the imagined. Ultimately, painting is a conversation. Artists riff off each other across time, remixing and reimagining, creating a shared language. It's not about fixed meanings but about opening up possibilities.