Abracadabra. Pavlo Makov

Abracadabra is an author’s book by the artist Pavlo Makov about the living, the threatened, and the unnamable. The artbook is a diary, an atlas of plants, and a notebook recorded by a traveler through the contemporary world, in which nonsense prevails over reliance and knowledge.

Pavlo Makov sees the world in a flow of irreversible, uncontrollable changes. His story begins with the work Dorothea, or the Siege of Kharkiv (2015–2016), from a city in defense. The records unfold on adjacent pages of the book and often contrast each other. On the one hand, there are the settlements of people structured by the rhythms of binary code and other systems of encryption. On the other hand, there are powerful plants that share with humans a landscape of war; they also exist in danger, but are capable of living separately and after humanity.

The book bounces between the familiar and as if seen for the first time, the repetitive everyday life and the incomprehensible against the background of continuing changes.