Before us is a scene of a card game. At the round table sit the players, some of whom have already left the game, it seems that the culmination of the opening of the cards is taking place. The characters are written roughly, as if by a child's hand, but in this carelessness and simplicity something ominous is guessed. The artist also roughly applies paint, sharp broad strokes in the same primitivist manner.
The faces of the characters express different emotions: the neutral look of the man in the hat, the benevolent naive smiles of the others and the ominous grin of the woman. All of them are directed at a girl with red hair, who is sitting with her back to the viewer. They are waiting for what step she will take. Clearly, there is more going on than just a simple card game.
The plot of the picture is a reference to the work of the same name by the expressionist Otto Dix, created in 1920. This picture was painted by Otto Dix after the First World War, depicting the powerful who control the fate of the whole of Europe by playing it at cards. The bloody senseless massacre that claimed and maimed millions of lives was unleashed as a result of the careless policy of the weak in power and contributed to the formation of those terrible phenomena that gave rise to the next world war.
The artist Kateryna Kopelkina creates this work at a time when the political situation in the world is undergoing another crisis and the exacerbation of military conflicts.
We are observing that events of the last century are repeated, at the same time when politicians and elites, like card players, continue the game of their own interests, in the period of new catastrophe.