Back to Krasny Kut 2009

Pavlo Makov made this artwork called Back to Krasny Kut with ink on paper. It seems the artist worked by laying down washes, and then made the marks of these spire-like shapes. Each one looks like a little world. I wonder if Makov worked on each section separately and then brought them together. There’s an area of darker marks that reads like bushes or a forest, and then this vertical red, like a vein through the whole thing. This calls to mind other artists who work with grids and repetition to create shifting, fluid, and ambiguous arrangements. I think of Agnes Martin and her quiet and restrained grid paintings, as well as the obsessive mark-making of Yayoi Kusama. Each artist seems to be in conversation with one another about how to create meaning through repetition and variation.