Signály/Signals 1967

Jaroslav Kaiser made this print called Signals, sometime in the 20th century. Look at that brooding presence in the middle of the image. A dark shape, an almost-being built from rectangles, squares, bits of architecture. It feels as if Kaiser was wrestling with form, coaxing order from chaos with these colliding geometric shapes in black, grey, and orange. I imagine him layering, scraping, and building the image, driven by intuition and the feel of the materials in his hands. The surface has a kind of scrappy texture which hints at a world of activity. There is an echo of Bauhaus perhaps, but Kaiser’s own abstract language is what comes through. Like any good signal, there is something that you almost understand, hovering there in the realm of feeling. And isn’t that the point? To keep talking, signaling, and adding our own images into the mix?