Numerical Affection 2 1982

Oleksandr Aksinin made Numerical Affection 2 with what looks like watercolour, using a meticulous process of layering colours. There’s something about the evenness of Aksinin’s application that makes you want to reach out and touch the surface, even though I know it’s just paper. Take the way the red and purple stripes sit side-by-side: the texture is incredibly flat and the paint is applied thinly, allowing the paper to breathe through. It’s as if the artist has painstakingly built the image layer by layer, with each tiny mark contributing to the whole. Look closer and you can see the way the translucent green pipe seems to float above the blocks of colour. Aksinin’s work reminds me a little bit of Paul Klee – that same embrace of whimsy, a kind of playfulness that gives space to ambiguity. Ultimately, art is a conversation and an ongoing exchange of ideas across time. It allows for multiple interpretations over fixed meanings.