Fish 1982

Curator: Oleksandr Aksinin's "Fish," created in 1982, presents an intriguing exploration of form using mixed media on what appears to be a square canvas, turned on its head to resemble a diamond. Editor: My initial impression is disorientation—a very geometric, somewhat unsettling play with perspective. That vibrant red practically vibrates, clashing against those curious green elements. Curator: It's interesting that you find it unsettling. Aksinin worked in a Soviet context, so this deviation from realism might be a quiet form of resistance. The geometrical forms could be seen as a symbolic language to veil political ideas or critique social structures. Editor: That's a very different perspective than what I initially got from it! Now I'm starting to feel a cage around that big red fish. But the meticulous lines, that strange text around the borders… it almost feels like a forbidden scientific diagram, not quite graspable. It is as if the very form and concept are compressed within something more that is just a pretty artwork. Curator: Exactly. This compression also reveals some of Aksinin's involvement in Ukrainian dissident circles; his works are full of allegory as well as personal symbolisms designed for restricted publics who could share in these symbolic interpretations. Editor: It makes me think about visual cryptography: something that might seem absurd but contains meaning available to the properly informed recipient. The rigid form of the "fish" makes it stiff, almost inhuman, and then one is prompted to explore further the elements placed over a field of blood red. So even the symbolism of freedom, expressed with color, looks stifled under a cloud of oppression and death. I now feel much better equipped to experience and understand Aksinin's "Fish." Curator: Absolutely. Considering it through the lens of cultural resistance adds another dimension. For me it underlines the significance of subversive ingenuity under periods when open political dialogue becomes highly constricted, something not immediately apparent, maybe… but a part of art, even now.