Canonical Image 1979

Here's Oleksandr Aksinin, a Ukrainian artist, with his peculiar Canonical Image. Look at that blue, like horizontal slats of sky, so calm and even, but then – BAM! – this red, alien form levitates into view, propped up by spindly green legs. I can imagine Aksinin, his brow furrowed, mixing the precise shade of that red, a color of warning and wonder. What’s it doing there? Does it belong? It's surrealist, like Magritte, but there's also something folk-art-ish. I can feel the artist searching for that perfect balance between order and the unexpected, you know? That tension between what we know and what we can imagine. Artists are always looking and borrowing, remixing what they see with what they feel, trying to make sense of the world. This painting, it's like a little puzzle, a question hanging in the air, and maybe the answer is different for each of us.