Escape to Egypt 2010

'Escape to Egypt’ by Arsen Savadov is swimming in a chaotic sea of figures and symbols realized in oil paint. I feel the artist standing there, brush in hand, wrestling with a jumble of ideas. The figures, rendered with loose brushwork, seem caught in a dance of ambiguity, like they are trying to escape from the canvas itself. And those colors, muted and earthy, but with these little jolts of bright accents – like the red heart or those floating stars – they give me a sense of unease. I see art history here, a nod to the old masters perhaps, but filtered through a contemporary lens. You see it in the figures, the way they’re posed, but everything is a little off, a little weird. It's like Savadov is inviting us to question our assumptions. Painting is like a conversation between artists across time, each one building on what came before, and I feel that here.