Untitled 1970

This untitled print was made by Jirí John in 1970, and what strikes me is the way he coaxes form out of tone, dark and light. I can almost see him, bent over the plate, incising lines, building up these fractured planes. It's like he's conjuring a landscape, or maybe a memory of one, out of thin air. I imagine John thinking about Cubism as he made this. There's a push and pull, a tension between abstraction and representation that keeps your eye moving, trying to piece it all together. The textures John creates are incredible, like layers of sediment or geological strata exposed by an earthquake. You know, artists are always in conversation, riffing off each other's ideas across time. John’s print is one person's take, one moment in an ongoing exchange. Like any good painting, it’s less about answers and more about questions, offering a space for us to wander and wonder.