Celia Borg Cardona, my favourite people watcher, is exhibiting paintings that are devoid of the physical presence of people.

Despite that, their presence is intrinsic to each work on display at this exhibition of paintings dating to 2013 and 2014.

This is because her paintings focus on architecture, spaces and construction, hence the exhibition title, Construct.

The remarkable strength in her brushwork, composition, palette and choice of subject matter, make this a memorable exhibition for her artistic career and for Maltese painting in general.

We have become accustomed to Borg Cardona making us look at people at the theatre, the cafe, the square…

Street of Merchants

Although she still looks down onto streets, she is now also bringing us back down to earth and the street view.

A view from above can still be seen in works such as Street of Merchants, which offers a view from the very top of Merchants’ Street, Valletta, with the church of St Catherine of Italy prominently on the left, the church of St James behind it and the Auberge de Castille on the right.

In this work, the sketchiness of the hurriedly executed outlines do not mitigate the solidity of the architectural forms portrayed.

Stupor Mundi offers a street view, albeit not a typical one. The slightly oblique view proposes a people-less night scene with street lamps providing different sources of light.

A memorable exhibition by a contemporary artist

Borg Cardona also invites us to look upwards at corners of buildings and the sky such as in Crossroads I and Crossroads II, where architecture and power lines tower over us with balconies and quoins taking centre stage. The chosen compositions are adequate for the subject matter.

Also inviting us to tilt our heads up is Looking Up, which present an internal view of a multi-storey palazzo bathed in incandescent red and oranges hues.

Bridged

Other works bring you below street level. Bridged proposes an alternative view of the wooden bridge near Victoria Gate that is also visible in The Long View, where the gate is seen from above.

The panel used for this painting was prepared and exploited to add to the composition’s charm.

The brushwork gives more character to the buildings and wooden structures portrayed, with red being again the dominant colour.

The commissioned views of the Renzo Piano City Gate project are awe-inspiring and forceful. They are records of an interim phase of construction that will soon be forgotten.

The surrounding bastions do not fail to make an appearance, and In the Moat aptly brings out the immensity of these structures.

The application of paint is limited to the necessary elements, with the linen support showing through in the foreground.

The main focus of the paintings in this exhibition is Valletta, but a Valletta like you’ve never seen it before.

This is because, although, prominent and beautiful buildings feature, they are not the main focus, and attention has also been devoted to the new structures of our grand capital city.

For instance, while we are never presented with Victoria Gate per se, its surrounding areas feature prominently.

The old and the new come together in one painting and in the exhibition as a whole.

This, and Borg Cardona’s mesmerising brushstrokes, render this exhibition unique and atypical to other landscape exhibitions. It is a painterly and visual record of Valletta in 2014.

The curating of the exhibition was done with good taste and a fresh outlook, and the props used in the galleries brought the construction site visible from the Upper Gallery windows indoors.

Borg Cardona is certainly not intimidated by a large blank canvas. The sheer size of some of the works filled the space with so much more than just painted images.

A video in the first room of the exhibition shows Borg Cardona at work on one of the large canvases.

Is this the most memorable exhibition of paintings by a contemporary artist of the year? For many fans of painting, it surely will be.

Construct is open until today at St James Cavalier, Valletta.