Exlibris of U.Stepanov 1979

Oleksandr Aksinin made this Exlibris, likely as a bookplate, sometime before his death in 1985. The work teems with surreal imaginings and painstaking detail. I wonder what it was like for Aksinin to create such precisely drawn forms. It’s easy to imagine him hunched over a desk, peering through a magnifying glass, using the finest of tools to create these intricate details. The crisp hatching and cross-hatching give the whole image a kind of buzzing energy. I’m drawn to the image of the plant sprouting from an industrial-looking pot. Its leaves burst forth, filling the central space with organic life. The contrast between the natural and the constructed—the leaves versus the geometric shapes and architectural details—creates a lively visual dialogue. It reminds me that art-making is like gardening. You tend to your materials, and coax something beautiful and unexpected into being. Painters build on one another’s experiments, whether they know it or not. Aksinin’s surreal landscapes exist in a realm of their own making. As viewers, we become active participants, piecing together the puzzle and finding our own meaning within its enigmatic depths.