Cat. PostA 1983

Curator: Welcome. We are looking at Oleksandr Aksinin’s “Cat. PostA,” a graphic print from 1983. The piece has the visual form of a postage stamp. Editor: I see a cryptic, whimsical little world pressed into this faux stamp. There's a peculiar melancholy about it. Almost feels like a dispatch from a dream. Curator: Precisely. Notice the artist's rigorous use of line, form, and symbolism to convey deeper themes. The composition features a stylized cat figure, possibly allegorical, placed above geometrical motifs all set within the stamp’s serrated border. Editor: And that cat! With the crescent moon above its head, perched above what appears to be a tower or a small house, sitting on top of crescent moons, as though in a boat atop a pond, or the ether itself. Those antennae, or are those feathery wings? There’s something quietly powerful and strangely sad about this small figure. Curator: Yes, Aksinin utilizes a muted palette. Notice the texture achieved by varying densities of fine lines. Semiotically, we can read this as a study of imposed restrictions versus limitless imaginative possibilities. Editor: A restriction like, say, a postal stamp format—within which he stages the limitless imagination of a feline deity in some hidden realm? The 'PostA' portion of the title intrigues me. Could it be a commentary on art as a medium, always sending messages across space and time? Even something as simple as a postage stamp, meant for mass production, is reborn here as something sacred and completely unknowable. Curator: Your interpretation is astute. This piece invites us to meditate on themes of containment, freedom, and the symbolic power inherent in the formal language of art itself. The use of form generates its own meaning, just as validly as any other semantic signifier within the piece. Editor: I am leaving here pondering the many imagined letters sent by that regal cat from some faraway dream country to we, its audience. The journey of the image itself. Curator: Indeed. It encapsulates Aksinin’s artistic prowess, which provides for us an experience that extends far beyond its graphic means.