Beauty Line. The Fourth 'Book of Schemes'. Album #1, the First Folder 1978

Valerii Lamakh made this, Beauty Line, as part of his ‘Book of Schemes’ – though when exactly, we don’t know. Looking at the symmetry, the shapes, it’s all about process for me, a kind of diagrammatic dance. The palette is simple: black and white, with a grey wash. The texture? Smooth. The central S curve in black undulates between two circles with tiny plus signs around them. It looks a little like a spinal cord to me. Around it, eight further circles are arranged in a ring, each divided into curving black and white halves. It’s hard to tell if it was done with ink or graphite. I can see the trace of the artist’s hand, the physical act of mark-making. It feels like something that exists between the realms of art and science. It reminds me a little of Hilma af Klint, who was also interested in diagrams, in the cosmos, and in hidden worlds. Like her work, Lamakh's art invites us to contemplate the mysteries of existence. But it’s also about art itself, about the ongoing exchange of ideas across time, the multiple readings we can bring to a single image.