PF 1983. Cards 1982

This is ‘PF 1983. Cards’ by Oleksandr Aksinin, made in 1983, although I can’t tell you what medium he used to make it. It looks like he built the image up with a whole lot of tiny marks. There’s a dark, diamond shape in the background, with a pale, central totemic form above two rectangles covered with glyphs, like playing cards, maybe. Aksinin was part of the Ukranian dissident movement, and I can't help wondering if this is some kind of coded message or hidden language. It's so detailed. I can imagine the artist's concentration as he made this, his hand moving with such precision. Look at the different shapes and how they echo each other. The cards are like the shoulders of the totemic figure, and I see these strange, bottle-like shapes at the top. Aksinin died young, and I feel a deep sense of loss when I look at this work. It's like he was trying to tell us something important, and we just have to figure out what it is. The act of making this was also an act of conversation, in this case with the future.