Canonical Image 1979

Oleksandr Aksinin made this work on paper with ink and watercolor, and right away, I'm imagining him hunched over a table, his mind a mix of precision and wildness. Look at how the watery green creates this otherworldly space, a stage for the strange drama unfolding. Are those pears up top, about to take a dive into that red, conical abyss? And what about those figures lurking beneath, all suggestion and no detail? Aksinin’s lines remind me of Paul Klee’s drawings—delicate, but loaded with meaning. I bet Aksinin was thinking about the absurd, the beautiful, and the way those two can crash into each other. Painting is a conversation, right? We all borrow, steal, and riff off each other, so it feels like I’m talking to him, and Klee, and all the artists who ever dared to make something weird and true.