Registration of Everything. Metalanguage 1980

Oleksandr Aksinin made "Registration of Everything. Metalanguage" in 1973 with pen, ink, and color pencil. It’s a grid of little universes, a kind of playful cataloguing that reminds me of how we try to make sense of the world. Aksinin's marks are so precise, yet there's a wildness to the whole thing. The red color punches through, highlighting certain squares and creating a rhythm across the surface. Zoom in on the square with the floating nails, for example. It's like a little constellation, each nail carefully placed, and the repetition gives it a strange kind of energy. You can almost feel him drawing each one, carefully considering the relationships between them. It makes me think of Paul Klee’s “pedagogical sketchbooks,” where he breaks down the elements of art into basic components and arrangements, to get at the deep structure of images and forms. But Aksinin has a different kind of sensibility. It’s a world of private symbols, a visual language that invites you to decode it, but maybe it’s more about the pleasure of looking than finding any definitive answer.