The Fourth 'Book of Schemes'. Album #1, the Second Folder 1978

Curator: Valerii Lamakh’s "The Fourth 'Book of Schemes'. Album #1, the Second Folder," made in 1978, combines mixed media, acrylic paint, and drawing to explore geometric abstraction. Editor: The organization, though! It's like a highly structured study. Almost like visual linguistics! I’m really taken by the systematic approach to colour and form on display. Curator: Precisely! Lamakh was deeply engaged with systems of meaning. Notice how in each quadrant, geometric forms arranged around a central point—often a void. What do these circular arrangements evoke for you? Editor: Well, immediately mandalas come to mind; this sense of ordered space and ritual… the central emptiness, a symbolic focal point. Curator: The resemblance to mandalas suggests that Lamakh tapped into something very ancient and cross-cultural. And considering this was created in 1978, we might even ponder if he had the internet, whether the global symbolism of these color arrangements would have resonated more clearly in Soviet-era Ukraine. Editor: Yes, the period really matters, doesn't it? Now that you point it out, I start to think that in absence of cultural openness and connectivity, these could have been tools for cognitive expression, and maybe some kind of silent resistance to uniformity through visual coding, maybe! Curator: Absolutely. There is an underlying system attempting to describe emotional response, and create its own language... even, perhaps, create some means to encode identity? Each quadrant contains subtly different colour choices and shape choices that allow Lamakh a way of describing his own inner states in a codified visual syntax. Editor: It's like a map of thought made visible! It allows a peek into the machinery of our emotional makeup… something so rarely formalized! Curator: Indeed. Lamakh gives us a visually compelling invitation into a hidden lexicon. Editor: A very thoughtful use of form to express something complex, and largely unnamable.