St. Benedykt 1981

Oleksandr Aksinin made this print, St. Benedykt, using some kind of graphic technique that allows for a very fine level of detail. The overall impression is one of painstaking labor and attention. What's amazing is how the feeling of the piece comes from its material presence. The green ground is made up of so many tiny marks, like the weave of a textile. These draw you in, but then your eye is led to the dark, velvety central form. It is a simple geometric shape, a vertical lozenge, but also suggests something more, perhaps the doorway into a church, marked with a cross. At the base of the lozenge, two rectangular forms shimmer like gothic windows. Aksinin’s work reminds me of Paul Klee’s, in its playful combination of geometric forms, symbolic references, and a certain mysterious quality. But like all good art, it feels like a conversation rather than a direct imitation. I get a sense that Aksinin is in dialogue with a whole history of art.