Jack Kohler Byers finds beauty in chaos and decay. His artworks revolve around typeface, though he’s not strictly a typography artist. Rather, Kohler Byers explores contemporary communication across a wide range of scales and media. The result is fragmented and messy – words layered on top of words, a group of letters forming incoherent sentences.
According to Kohler Byers, he was first drawn to the art of typography when he was just a child. Growing up in a small New York town, he remembers being intrigued by the fading letters of hand-painted signs during visits to a nearby industrial city.
“These fragmented messages activated my imagination to speculate about the day they were freshly painted, who painted them, and the different events that led to their decay,” he reflected in an interview with Art of Choice. “These century-old letters formed a dynamic contrast with more contemporary letters being painted around the city by its younger occupants.”
A self-taught artist through and through, Kohler Byers’ style was inspired by modern artists such as Picasso. “I don’t have the benefit of a formal artistic training, everything I learned was by reading, learning lessons, and picking up wisdom from others,” he notes.
The result, though chaotic, is well worth taking note of:
