Winter garden 3 2020

Curator: Pavlo Makov's "Winter Garden 3," created in 2020, offers us a complex network of imagery rendered with ink on paper. The composition is quite intriguing. What's your initial read? Editor: Stark, almost diagrammatic. The hard lines connecting what seem to be floating potted plants create a curious disconnect. It's both beautiful and unsettling, as if mapping an unseen, perhaps even impossible, ecosystem. Curator: The connecting lines do indeed add a layer of symbolism. It’s a contemporary landscape drawing presented in the form of a mental map. Notice the house toward the lower-left. It feels… displaced. Editor: Exactly! The placement is odd. Isolated yet tethered into this broader schematic network by those rigid lines. I’m wondering how it comments on urbanization. Is Makov suggesting that our dwellings, even our very concept of “home,” are unnaturally linked into these wider botanical systems we barely grasp? Curator: The geometric composition contrasted with organic forms makes for a strong tension. The birds add to it. They're a traditional symbol of freedom, but even they seem caught in this constructed web. Their appearance here adds to the sense of longing. Perhaps even hope. Editor: Perhaps the plants represent cultivated nature. There's something deeply symbolic about containing wildness within these geometric boundaries. Makov is making a sharp comment about the way we engage with and manage the natural world through societal constructs and regulations. Curator: It's as if each plant becomes a node in a larger system, reflecting the way we curate and categorize nature to our purposes, while still acknowledging a desire for more. This is not just about physical landscapes; it reflects an interior terrain as well. It highlights an intricate web of emotional connections between ourselves and our environment. Editor: Ultimately, a powerful statement. The piece invites us to contemplate on these interconnected realms – the home, the wild, and everything in-between. Makov’s graphic rendition prompts a new awareness about these complex relations and the effect they have on us, both as individuals and as members of a larger, natural sphere. Curator: It gives a great new context to our concept of ‘garden’ and what it has to represent in our contemporary world.