The Golden Cockerel 1979

Oleksandr Aksinin made this painting, The Golden Cockerel, with what looks like colored inks and a very fine pen to create an intricate symbolic composition. The piece is an amazing feat of obsessive mark-making, with all those tiny little dots! I imagine the artist sitting for hours, carefully building up the image dot by dot. I think maybe Aksinin started with the central totem, with that proud cockerel at the top, and then allowed the rest of the composition to unfold outwards like an unfolding dream. What is the relationship between that crown and the figure on the right? The combination of hot pinks, oranges, and greens give it this feeling of being both exotic and slightly unsettling. The arrows piercing the totemic structure make me wonder if they’re directed at the bird or if it's just trying to reach out to the world beyond its frame. The artist creates a world with its own set of rules and symbols, which feels similar to the visionary drawings of Hilma af Klint. It's almost like artists are in this ongoing dialogue through time, inspiring each other to keep pushing the boundaries of what painting can be!