PF 1979 1978

Oleksandr Aksinin made this print called PF 1979, but what kind of print, you may ask? To me, it looks like a careful, almost scientific illustration, rendered in a muted palette. Up close, the texture is built from countless tiny marks, it is as if Aksinin is feeling his way through the image one tiny piece at a time. This kind of mark-making takes time, patience, and a certain kind of trust in the process. Look at the way the repeating forms build into larger wholes, like a colony or an organism. Each layer is slightly different, as if adapting to its environment. The piece reminds me of the obsessive detail of Hilma af Klint's botanical drawings. Both invite us to consider how the tiniest elements can come together to create complex systems, and how art can be a way of mapping the unseen forces that shape our world. Like Klint, Aksinin embraces ambiguity and invites us to bring our own associations and interpretations to the work.