Street Vendors by Simon Barthet

“It obliges you to work outside your usual parameters and in so doing discover new potential,” says Alex Attard, one of the five artists who in July and August of last year visited the Beijing and Henan provinces to hold an itinerant exhibition, entitled Inspired in China – Fine Art Exhibition by Maltese Artists.

The other artists were Catherine Cavallo, Antoine Farrugia, Darren Tanti and Simon Barthet and the invitation was forth-coming from the Ministry of Culture of China, with the recommendation of Arts Council Malta, Spazju Kreattiv and Art Discussion Group.

The exhibition is now being shown at the Monet Gallery, Cavalieri Art Hotel, St Julian’s, with the main aim of strengthen the artistic ties between Malta and China.

This bridging effort implies an artistic division between West and East – this is fuelled by the artists’ approach. For instance, whereas Chinese artists use their imagination to paint expressive interpretations of nature, Western artists rely more on shapes, colours, lights and shadows to convey a scene.

The Lotus Flower by Catherine Cavallo

Also, Chinese painting tends to focus more on the power of suggestion to capture the essence of an object, while traditional Western painting relies on the meticulous depiction of the object’s form.

“The division between Western and Eastern art is one that is plotted on an ongoing artistic spectrum,” Tanti suggests. “This experience helped me develop artworks that superimpose different visuals from East and West, quoting different artists from different periods and referencing my own experience during my stay in China and my daily life in a European nation.”

In this way, the exhibition celebrates the elements that join the two seemingly opposing worlds rather than whatdivides them.

The idea of deconstruction – entangling a united whole – has for many years dominated the Western world but is also seen in artists of Eastern origin, albeit perhaps attempting to portray something different. He Ping amply showcased this in last year’s exhibition Persistence of Form.

“My work is a process that starts from a deconstructive effort and moves to a combination of all elements into a new whole,” Farrugia says. “The work I am presenting in the Inspired in China exhibition not only deconstructs form but also makes reference to different instances in which the materials I came across in China served as inspiration for new work,” he adds.

The concept of deconstruction is only one of the ways Eastern and Western art can be combined – the works in the exhibition show that the very elements that divide East and West are the same that unite them together. Without the crucial elements that determine Eastern art, one cannot gauge what makes Western art and vice-versa. The exhibition, therefore, helps in blurring what is initially assumed to be a bold and definite division.

Inspired in China is on display at Monet Gallery, Cavalieri Art Hotel, St Julian’s, until Sunday, May 7. It will then move to the Parliament building in Valletta.

Protocol by Darren Tanti

I Love Great Wall Triptych by Alex Attard

Inspired by the Great Wall of China by Antoine Farrugia