Attempt for Versailles II 2006

Pavlo Makov made this drawing, Attempt for Versailles II, with a clear love for process and a real sense of history. The way the ink bleeds and spreads on the paper is everything here. It’s not about perfection, but about embracing the accidental. You can see it especially in the lines that map out the "waterworks", those vein-like trails snaking across the surface, where something has been spilled, or maybe deliberately dripped and directed, to give this ordered garden a sort of lived-in, organic feel. It reminds me a bit of Piranesi’s etchings, with that same sense of grand, slightly crumbling architecture. But where Piranesi is all about the drama, Makov feels more intimate, more personal. It's like he's inviting us to imagine our own version of a perfect world. And that’s what art should do, right? Open up possibilities.