The signal 1995

Hanno Karlhuber made this 70 x 100 cm painting, The Signal, with paint on canvas, though the exact date is unknown. He creates an image that feels both dreamlike and precise, which is quite a trick. The texture is smooth, the colours muted. It’s an exercise in close-valued blues and pinks. The real star here is the red traffic light, smack dab in the middle. It pops like a warning or maybe a question. The way Karlhuber handles paint, it's not about showing off brushstrokes. Instead, he almost hides the process, making it about the feeling of the scene, this eerie stillness. The endless train tracks remind me of Giorgio de Chirico's metaphysical landscapes, that same sense of haunting emptiness. In both artists’ work, it’s not about the thing itself, but the space around it, the silence, the what-ifs. Art’s not about answers, but about wandering through the questions.