Triumph of the Little Endians. Gulliver 1975

Oleksandr Aksinin made this piece, *Triumph of the Little Endians. Gulliver*, sometime before 1985, using ink and possibly some collage. It’s a mind-bending image that makes me think about art-making as a process of layering and building worlds. Aksinin’s mark-making feels both precise and intuitive, mixing hard lines with soft, cloudy shapes. I’m drawn to the central blue form that dominates the composition. It's like a stack of puffy clouds, or maybe some kind of futuristic building blocks, rendered in deep blues and turquoise. The transparency and opaqueness of the ink create a sense of depth and movement, as if the form is breathing or shifting before our eyes. Look at the way the blues bleed into each other, creating these subtle gradients. Aksinin reminds me a bit of Paul Klee, in the way he combines playful imagery with a kind of philosophical depth. Like Klee, Aksinin seems to be inviting us to embrace ambiguity and multiple interpretations.