Big Ficus 1976

Oleksandr Aksinin made this etching, Big Ficus, sometime around 1976, and right away I’m wondering about the process of making it - all those tiny, precise lines etched into a metal plate and then printed. There’s something kind of obsessive about it, isn’t there? Like Agnes Martin but with this really dark, surreal edge. It’s a view into a room, maybe a bedroom, but the perspective is all wonky, like a dream. The bed is front and center, and above it there is what I guess is the ficus of the title, but it could be an enormous flower. Around the edge, all these grotesque figures are peeking in, like demons from a medieval painting. The paper itself is stained and aged, and it gives the whole thing an eerie, haunted feeling. It reminds me a little bit of Klee, you know? That combination of whimsy and darkness. But with Aksinin, it’s like he’s inviting us into a world that’s both familiar and deeply unsettling. Art as an ongoing conversation, indeed.