Despite having lived and studied in Moscow from early adulthood, Arkadiy Petrov has always had a predilection for his childhood environment. Today a part of Eastern Ukraine, this very provincial region seemed at once hopelessly grey, idyllic and absurd after World War 2. According to Petrov’s description, the collective estates were occupied by metallurgists, peasants, intellectuals, Armenians, gypsies, thieves and simple people side-by side, with a bazaar in the centre, where everyone turned up, from the blind accordionist to streetwalkers. In giving a commemorative account of this heterogeneous environment, Petrov employed a simple style that can be related to naïve art. In the first half of the seventies, he made a lot of postcard-like, anecdotal paintings of provincial daily life, in glum colours, yet sporting a kind of humorous approach. As opposed to this, the painting The Dolls Are Playing is characterised by lighter colours and – if you will – airier brushstrokes, while the general effect is particularly grotesque, bordering on scary. The frontier between objecthood and humanness is blurred to such an extent that the dolls may well be puppets, and the rough proportions, the wobbly spatiality and the fragmented body parts make the piece surreal. Ultimately, one might surmise that the rope holding the colourful little flags meant to symbolize the merriness of the game is in fact a rope serving to move marionettes.