S.M. Garden 2019

Pavlo Makov made this delicate print, S.M. Garden, using etching on paper. Can you imagine the pressure of the tool on the plate, the artist's hand guiding it to create this whole world? It's a garden, a city, a mindscape. This garden feels personal, obsessive, like a place the artist has returned to again and again, each time finding something new. Is it a real place, or a memory of one? I find myself wondering about the artist's state of mind, the repetition, the detail. Etching is a slow, thoughtful process. It's about control but also about letting go, allowing the acid to bite, to have its say. The artist plans, the acid improvises, together, they make something new. This work makes me think about Sol LeWitt and other conceptual artists who use systems to make art. Each mark connects with a prior one, in conversation with those that came before it. It is a process of emergence, one idea sprouting from another, endlessly resonating and evolving.