Canonical Image 1979

Oleksandr Aksinin made "Canonical Image" with, I guess, paint, but who knows! It's all about how the paint's put down, right? I mean, look at that big red area up top – you can see each stroke, like the making of the thing is right there on the surface. Then you've got the blue stuff, like a weird mountain range or something, and it's all these flat planes. Aksinin isn't trying to trick you with fancy perspective or anything. It's interesting to look at the way he uses line, and it's almost like he's drawing with the paint, but it's flat and graphic. I like how the bright, hot red contrasts with the cooler blues and greens. It reminds me a little of the way someone like, say, Etel Adnan stacks colors and shapes. But Aksinin has his own thing going on. It's like he's building a world from scratch, one color, one line, one shape at a time. It's so personal! It suggests a certain way of seeing, a certain way of thinking about the world that is so singular to Aksinin.