Maltese contemporary art seems to be reinventing itself by diluting the shock factor and tackling contemporary arguments from a philosophical viewpoint.

Maltese conceptual art and its associated manifestations of installations, video art and happenings were all the rage in the last two or three years of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st. The traditional art forms of painting and sculpture were put on the back-burner as the Maltese art loving public was introduced to novel ‘transgressive’ approaches.

Wallace Falzon – Life is Beautiful

In the last few years, there has been a resurgence of the traditional art forms and many Maltese artists are non-anachronistically going back to the roots.

It is in this spirit that The Gallery of 72, Psaila Street, Birkirkara has been launched as an alternative exhibiting space for artists that need an intimate space to display their art without the glamour of Fluxus-inspired drama. Wallace Falzon’s collection of painting and sculpture is its baptism.

The Maltese artist’s first solo exhibition, Existential Freedom, is a take on two years of the life of an artist in the therapeutic act of expressing himself while overcoming personal and debilitating pitfalls.

Perhaps, the artist identifies himself in Anima, an imposing one-metre-high sculpture in which one can be reminded of the slenderness and fragility of an Alberto Giacometti.

The wings in preparation for flight and the balancing on the ball of the right foot in anticipation for take-off suggests the Nike of Samothrace, the Hellenistic masterpiece that is a celebration of victory.

Similarly, Falzon is victoriously divesting himself of an earthbound husk. However, Anima’s pair of wings seem to be structurally unfit for flight. The ‘feathers’ are sparse and one would expect starts, stops and failures as the corpus lunges into nothingness.

There is no solidity of the wing span of Anthony Gormley’s Angel of the North, where a mere metaphorical twitch of wing muscles could launch the majestic angel out of the stratosphere and into the heavens above.

Falzon’s Anima is like a frail insect with gossamer wings, whose innate urge to fly might just beat the odds of an earthbound predicament. It is like a debilitated moth crawling out of its chrysalis and flexing its new limbs. Flight, like success, at these times is just a matter of luck.

According to Jungian psychology, the Anima is the feminine counterpart which is within every man and which completes him. The famous Swiss psychoanalyst postulates that the anima is responsible for the secondary female sexual features that counterbalances the male brashness.

A man is sometimes said to be in touch with his feminine side. Such a statement acknowledges this duality which can essentially determine the success in intimate relationships. Embryo, a mixed media sculpture that tackles a contemporary hot potato, is Falzon’s comment on the ongoing IVF/embryo freezing frenzy that has gripped the islands in the last few weeks.

Advocating an aesthetic which is forward looking, yet somewhat traditional

The earthy limestone ‘carapace’ envelops the developing golden hued embryo in a Barbara Hepworth style hole. In Hepworth’s case, the hole is empty and leads itself to be interpreted in a number of ways. According to art historian Jeanette Winterson in her essay on the celebrated British sculptor, “Time is the Hole where we begin and end; the womb, the birth canal, the grave in the ground, and it is the Whole where our lives are played out”.

In 1931, incidentally the year of the birth of her first child, Hepworth pierced the first hole in one of her sculptures and broke new ground.

Anima

It is safe to assume that her motherhood had inspired her to ‘punch out’ a hole which symbolises her womb, the sacred place within her body that offered nutrition, shelter and love during the gestation.

Quoting the Maltese artist; “The texture of the embryo (which is made up of a composite material) is finished like the stone (which is limestone) symbolising Mother Earth. The embryo is painted in gold which is a most precious material. The embryo is always human, although it can receive nourishment either naturally or artificially.”

Like Hepworth, Falzon has punched out a hole in the limestone rock to act as a womb. In his case, the womb is still in gestation and the fully-formed embryo is awaiting delivery. The Hepworth holes can be compliant wombs ready to accept the fertilised ovum or tomb like wombs after birth or abortion.

This collection of paintings and sculptures is an artist’s diary of emotion, nostalgia and impulses. Falzon isn’t constrained thematically, the only boundary set being his output of the last couple of years. However, ballet and dance links some of the exhibits. The gracious pliant bodies, the gestures and the choreography are celebrated in a number of sculptures and complimentary paintings.

A sculptural homage to Matisse’s masterpiece The Dance is one of the highlights of this exhibition. The five figures are held captive in a circular formation as they prance and caper around in orgiastic abandon. As in Matisse’s work, there is one break in the circle of hands as we are invited to join in the fun and be children once again.

This invitation to childhood is the subject of some other paintings. Life is Beautiful is an outstanding ode to a time in life where the fields were infinite and in the riot of spring. The young, innocent girl in a white frock, arms up in the air, runs towards happiness and freedom.

Embryo

One longs to join her as she sprints across those fields; one painfully longs to be a five-year-old all over again. In the famous film bearing the same name, Roberto Benigni’s Guido attempts to disguise to his young son the tragedy that is their life in the concentration camp.

He does this by inventing a game of pretence in which the Holocaust is a contest, an army tank being the price for coming out on top. A game which Guido loses.

The little girl in the painting does not need a fake scenario to experience pure unadulterated joy in the safety of a Maltese countryside in which the Mdina skyline still reigns supreme. It is an ode to an idyllic past which was as yet unpolluted by the holocaust of highrises, heavy machinery and destruction. 

The launch of The Gallery and the concurrent official inauguration of Falzon’s Existential Freedom will go some way into advocating an aesthetic which is forward-looking, yet somewhat traditional. Quoting French art historian Jean Clair’s views on the fin de siècle excesses under the pretext of art, “from taste, we have passed on to disgust”. Tradition is a safe bet for a return to taste.