Step by Step is a journey through space and time, ascending on steps that lead to change and growth through experience.
Artist John Borg plays around with the light falling on the rocks: at times it is vibrant, blazing and blinding and at others saturated, strong or even mitigated.
Keen on sensitive nuances, his trained nature captures a sense of actuality, a surreal reality, a mood that could be magical, mysterious, or mundane, according to choice.
The artist loves shade, especially that strong deep shadow that seems black but in reality is a dark blue as in Bastion Steps .
This sensual shadow is strikingly present in Heavenly Presence, with shafts of light penetrating the shadows under tall beech trees and also in Olive Trees, a grove of old gnarled and distorted trees. The mood is poetic.
The exhibition is a collection of meticulously clean works, almost clinical in concept, that reveals the artist’s research and study about the subject, though the theme is hardly the main aim or scope. It serves only as a means to an end: an urge to create through an intensive concentrated effort a bid to surpass, outshine and overwhelm himself.
In Hidden Passage he bewilders the viewer with a study of rock, with light that caresses the stone, chiselling it into shape and animating it with a soul. In a bid to deceive the eye, he creates an optical illusion of space using both linear and tonal perspective in depicting a few rough steps that come to an end against an impenetrable rock face.
The bone dry rock is in contrast to the lush, damp grass and shadow. If in other works, especially those depicting the ruined Opera House, the artist achieves a sense of technical bravura and virtuosity, in Hidden Passage he obtains a sense of creative achievement.
Step by Step and One Step at a Time are lyrical and poetic in their acute realism and natural dispersion of dry leaves that are symbolic of changing season, of life trickling away. The simplicity of the compositions and the humblechoice of subject contribute to the excellence of both works.
The eroded step in One Step at a Time, rounded smooth by constant friction, underlines the futility of life, that physical matter wears away and with time is distilled into pure energy.
Impossible to ignore completely is the irregular, geometric dark shadow cast by wrought iron railings in Bastion Steps and in Bridge Stairs, both important for its documentary allusion to our industrial history during British Malta.
Quite outstanding is Man’s First Step at Ta’ Ħaġrat in Mġarr, with such eloquent monumental monoliths that speak volumes about our prehistoric predecessors and their artistic acumen.
This collection is all about the journey in life, the steps that reach upwards, that we take one at a time during our life – cautiously quenching our thirst for first-hand experience that spells change and growth.
Step by Step runs at the Valletta Waterfront until Friday. The exhibition is in aid of the Malta Community Chest Fund.