In 1970, Jean-Pierre Melville made a film entitled Le Cercle Rouge. Set in the world of gangsters, the movie opens with a quote by Rama Krishna: “Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, drew a circle with a piece of red chalk and said: ‘When men, even unknowingly, are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever the diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come together in the red circle.’” Thanks to this quote, the crime film – in which the circle of destiny takes three men directly into the open arms of death – acquired a certain touch of mysticism. However, the opening statement was never one actually uttered by Ramakrishna. Melville made it up, much like his own pseudonym. Tillman Kaiser has painted a red circle on one of his new paintings. A similar red circle was the central motif of his last solo exhibition La voix des airs two years ago in Vienna. The painting with a red circle in the centre bore the multivalent title Toll (2021) and was created with a combination of classical painting and cyanotype. Kaiser has been working with various older photographic techniques for several years now. Besides cyanotypes, his canvases feature a wide diversity of found objects, sculptures and painterly gestures. A withered, talking bush has become the most recent protagonist to cast its inverse shadow on Kaiser’s canvas.

Few woody plants grow high up in the inaccessible mountains of the alpine zone. The characteristic appearance of this landscape is created by the inhospitable climate and height above sea-level. Only a thin layer of white snow covers the sharp peaks, powerful winds carry it incessantly down into the valleys. The blue-grey air almost blends with the clear blue sky, penetrated by thin flashes of reddish sunlight. Clouds roll all around, reminiscent of thick smoke, obscuring the view. At night the clouds recede, the air clears and the jagged relief of the surrounding landscape is illuminated by the moon. At that moment the bush speaks with a female voice (during the day it sounds like a man).

The plant communities of the Alpine tundra are renowned for the sensitivity. They react immediately to changes in their surroundings. When I turned on the dictaphone on my telephone, the indistinct voices fell silent at once. It was the depth of night and the wind was carrying sounds far into the distance. An icy crust began to form around the shining screen. With my fingers numb with cold I tried to scrape off the bits of ice. I couldn’t do it, new crystals of frozen water kept reforming rapidly on the glass case. Delicate structures interconnected into transparent networks. The moon’s rays bathed the landscape in a weak light. A milky mist began rising from the valley. I ceased to be able to discern surrounding objects, their outlines became blurred. I woke up in the middle of a great, red circle. Dawn was slowly approaching. I felt my phone under my jacket, the battery was running out. I stretched out my hand and took a photo of myself. Behind me there was the snow-covered plain and a blurred red line. When I looked at the face on the screen, it occurred to me that it looked almost like me.

— Jiří Havlíček