The Golden Cockerel 1979

Oleksandr Aksinin’s “The Golden Cockerel” is a complex image, likely made with ink and colored pencils. Look at the way he’s built up the surface with tiny, methodical marks, like a kind of obsessive, beautiful knitting. The colors are so vibrant; pinks, oranges, greens, and black, creating a kind of hallucinatory folk art. There’s this incredible tension between the flat, patterned areas and the illusionistic space he’s trying to create with those long, dark shadows. Notice the way the cockerel rises above all the other figures and forms: is he a symbol of power, or just a goofy bird perched on top of a strange totem? Aksinin seems to have been influenced by the Symbolist movement and artists like Gustav Klimt, who were also interested in exploring psychological states through ornamental and decorative forms. Aksinin's work invites us to embrace ambiguity and see the world as a space of infinite possibilities, where symbols and meanings are constantly shifting and transforming.