Spool 1980

This curious work ‘Spool’ was made by Oleksandr Aksinin. It’s a kind of tapestry of tiny words that form a cylindrical object. I imagine the artist hunched over this for hours, maybe listening to music, patiently building this tower of text. The color is like a faded photograph, a pinky hue that gives it a vintage feel, like something found in grandma's attic. Can you see how Aksinin is working with the materiality of text itself to create something both representational and abstract? There's a kind of obsessive quality to it, reminiscent of outsider art. The letters all crammed together remind me of Hanne Darboven's number grids, or even some of Ree Morton's more eccentric pieces. I can see Aksinin working away, line after line. Each letter must have been like laying a tiny brick. Aksinin probably had some kind of world in his head that he was putting down on paper like an incantation. It reminds us that art is like a conversation, an exchange, a thread that runs through time, connecting us to each other.