The artist’s cylindrical and spherical forms are executed with subtlety and sophistication. Right: Darmanin’s work convey a sense of movement.

Twanny Darmanin’s current exhibition focuses on the concept of time and space between a painting and another.

Darmanin is a well-known name on the Maltese art scene, mostly known for his distinctive style of painting that makes his work easily identifiable from that of other artists. Primarily a painter, he also produces sculptures in various media.

Since his studies at the School of Art, Darmanin always had a great intuition as a painter, a passion for experimentation and a love of colour, form and texture. Today, he creates figurative paintings with the typical hard edge, cylindrical and spherical forms executed with subtlety and sophistication.

In this collection of works, Darmanin is presenting to the public a series of themes that vary from the religious to the social and historical. The artist’s works convey a sense of movement, even in just a solitary female figure at a window sill. In Iz-Zekzika, the woman expresses motion with her body and limbs while speaking, so as to enforce the idea of emotion, argumentation and sentimentality.

Some of the charm of Darmanin’s paintings is found in his simplicity and directness

This type of gesticulation is also found in other works like in The Art of Beauty, which represents a woman with raised arms combing her hair in front of a mirror and assisted by another person. Thematically, this reminds me of other great modernists who addressed this theme many times during their life, namely Degas, Renoir, Sisley, Toulous-Lautrec, Kirchner, Picasso and others.

Some of the charm of Darmanin’s paintings is found in his simplicity and directness. First Encounter is a painting which represents a mother, a baby and her daughter. Darmanin chose this subject to prove his devout admiration of the family. Even in his other painting called Love, the bond of the mother with that of the child is emphasised. Typical of Darmanin are his large curves, circles, spirals and whimsical shapes which we find in this work and others that play an important part in his visual compositions.

In recent years, some Maltese contemporary artists attempted to reinterpret the works of the great baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610).Even Darmanin contributed to the re-interpretation of this master’s work, choosing to re-interpret The Musicians or Concert of Youths (c. 1595).

Caravaggio composed this from the studies of two figures. The central figure with the lute has been identified as Caravaggio’s companion Mario Minniti, and the individual next to him and facing the viewer is possibly a self-portrait of the artist. Darmanin kept the same composition and outline of the figures but uses the bright and bold colours with the typical curves and round shapes.

Rene Magritte’s The False Mirror, which represents a painting of a large eye, is a haunting piece of surrealist art that challenges the perceptions of the artist and the viewer. An intriguing painting by Darmanin is entitled The Eye, which is not exactly like the one presented by Magritte, but is rather an eye gazing at the viewers and emerging from a female figure, surrounded by other figures that express a sense of anxiety.

It is a terrifying look, an overwhelming appearance of a dream vision which possibly alludes to the anima of the artist. The artist unconsciously expresses what the unconscious dictates during the course of the creation of this work. This painting also reminds me of the great Swiss visionary artist Peter Birkhäuser who makes great emphasis on eyes in his paintings.

In this selection of works, Darmanin shows four paintings related to the Goddess and the richness of Malta’s prehistoric past: Sleeping Lady, Mother Goddess, The Enlightenment and Temple of the Soul. In The Enlightenment, we see a painting depicting a clothed female figure on the foreground representing the symbol of awaking consciousness. At the background we can see the entrance to the temples, which signifies the dividing line between the world of consciousness and that of the unconscious, the world of the spirit.

This exhibition is valuable to all those who want to enjoy an aesthetic experience and to appreciate the imaginative vision of the artist.

Time Lapse runs at the Auberge D’Italie, Valletta between May 2 and 25.