Cards 2002

Aleksandr Borodin’s painting, “Cards,” is a fascinating surface of tessellated triangles, each a tiny canvas for representational images. The geometric structure looks like a flattened geodesic dome, as if Buckminster Fuller were interested in playing cards. There is a sense of order and calculation, even mathematical precision, in the way the composition is laid out. But this order is offset by the surprising range of images – religious symbols like the crown of thorns, playing cards of course, and various mundane objects: fruit, fragments of human anatomy, enigmatic script. The overall effect is destabilizing, and not unlike a house of cards, in that the whole could collapse at any moment. Borodin here gives us an inventory of the everyday world. In so doing, he reveals the delicate balance of meaning we constantly negotiate, and the way any small intervention can upset everything.