Untitled 1958

This untitled etching was made by Jaroslav Serych, and the method itself is old school and cool – the metal plate bitten by acid, leaving these velvety marks. I can imagine Serych hunched over a table, carefully layering tones, building up this dreamlike landscape. The colour palette is muted, mostly earth tones, with these surprising pops of plum and black. It feels very interior, like a memory or a half-forgotten tale. Look at the three marks in the top left, they look like arrows, but maybe they are dark clouds? Then there’s the shape that looks like a hand. And those funny trees that are more like lollipops. Serych is playing with different ways of seeing, layering meaning and ambiguity. It reminds me a bit of the surrealist project, a way of accessing the unconscious, through the magic of mark-making. We are all connected, artists are always looking at each other and finding inspiration in the most unexpected places, it is an ongoing conversation across time.