The Fourth 'Book of Schemes'. Album #2, the First Folder 1978

Valerii Lamakh made The Fourth ‘Book of Schemes’ with coloured inks on paper. Looking at it, I imagine Lamakh bent over his table, carefully drawing lines, each a different colour – pink, yellow, green, blue. Did he measure them? It feels like he was deeply focused, letting his intuition guide the choice of colours. What’s a scheme anyway? Is he mapping out a plan or does the word have a more poetic meaning here? I think of Hilma af Klint making her own diagrams with her own symbolic language. Both artists are onto something, aren’t they? A kind of personal code. Each line vibrates against the white surface, creating a rhythm like musical notes. It is hard to say what that rhythm is. Making these lines must have been a meditative process. A labour of love. I feel Lamakh’s presence in the small imperfections of the radiating lines. That’s what makes it human and keeps it alive.