Exlibris of V.Krivulin 1980

Oleksandr Aksinin made this Exlibris of V.Krivulin with ink, scratching away at the surface, I imagine, to create a world dense with detail. I’m thinking about the artist, bent over this small oval, and the mark-making is almost obsessive, a kind of tender madness. What world was Aksinin trying to conjure? It reminds me of outsider art, or folk art, where the act of creation is as important as the final image. The texture builds up with each tiny stroke, a landscape of patterns surrounding the central figure. There’s something so human about that repetitive gesture. When I look at it, I feel I could get lost, like a conversation that keeps turning back to the same point but from different angles. Artists borrow from each other all the time; it's like we are talking to one another across time. But Aksinin's graphic language feels very personal, very peculiar, so you can't pin it down. It makes you want to linger, look closer, and then look again.