Commedia dell'Arte in Crimea 2012

Arsen Savadov’s "Commedia dell'Arte in Crimea" is a photographic tableau that marries the theatrical with the environmental. He layers artifice onto nature, and the effect is wonderfully jarring. Look at the way he poses his characters, it feels performative. We see ballet dancers and harlequins arranged almost like a classical painting. The backdrop of the Crimean forest is so real, it sets up this tension between what’s staged and what’s not. The water, reflecting the gray sky and the checkerboard objects floating in the lake, it's very evocative. The costuming is incredibly detailed. The texture of the tulle of the ballet tutus contrasts with the jesters’ ruffs, all set against the natural backdrop. The photograph sets up this conversation between history, nature, and the human impulse to create, making it a wild synthesis, like a Russian conceptualist painting from the eighties.