Bull 1985

Oleksandr Aksinin made this etching called 'Bull' sometime before his death in 1985. The image is black ink on a pale background. It's an intense, symmetrical composition with all these tiny details packed together. I can imagine Aksinin bent over the plate, using a super fine tool to create this world. I mean, what was he thinking? Is this bull a spirit animal, a mechanical beast, or some kind of coded map? Maybe it's all those things at once. Look at how precise he was with those marks. It's like he was building the image one tiny stroke at a time, almost meditative. The bull itself is a strange creature. It's got multiple eyes and these weird, skeletal wings. And those interlocking rings hanging from its neck! The whole thing reminds me of Paul Klee’s dreamlike imagery. These artists are having a conversation across time and space. It's all about layers of meaning, you know? Nothing is ever just one thing. And that’s what makes art so endlessly fascinating.