Gozitan artist Mario Cassar has devised his personal unorthodox method at artistic expression, one which he has been pursuing since 1999. What set him on this journey, which resulted in Sacred Rubbings, was a marble gravestone that was replete with engraved text. This slab provided the artist with a narrative, a conceivable biography of the people interred six feet under. This was the first template for Cassar’s original experimentation with the possibilities of frottage (French for rubbing).

Epitaphs orient the cemetery visitors through family trees of sorts, as relationships etched on the tombstone are tentatively deciphered. Silent stories of sadness in the untimely deaths of young infants, smiling pictures included, might elicit heartache in the most sensitive of us, and induce us to wax philosophical about the inanity of life.

Cassar employing frottage at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall.

However, Cassar attempts to release the memories etched in marble, stone and other materials from their silence and stagnation through visual and nar­rative juxtapositions. The epitaphs and the ornate reliefs act as springboards to the compilation of new chapters.

Frottage was a technique that the Dada and surrealist Max Ernst developed and used in a series of drawings that he published in 1926. Wood grain in the old planks of wooden floors intrigued the German artist. The meanderings of the grain had been accentuated by shoes scrubbing against the floors and by the abrasive cleaning efforts along the years. The German artist captured these ready-made compositions by placing sheets of paper on the floor and rubbing over them with a soft pencil.

The passage of time is also a factor which Cassar explores, the templates for the rubbings being usually timeworn and deteriorated, through the agency of weather and human activity. Both Ernst and Cassar attempt to waylay time by capturing an image of an object that time might change, break or even destroy.

Untitled IV

There is a sense of temporal documentation for posterity, coupled with a forlorn sense of possible loss, which makes the process more precious. Ernst published his rubbings, suggestive of bird-like creatures and forests, in a 1926 publication Histoire Naturelle. Cassar proposes his frottages as a collection of 23 graphite and ink drawings on paper, Sacred Rubbings, at Desko Gallery in Valletta, and, at a later date, at the Exhibition Hall, Ministry for Gozo.

Cassar rubs onto the sheet all the information that presents itself and interprets the images thus produced by creatively adding layers to the raw original rubbing

Cassar rubs onto the sheet all the information that presents itself and interprets the images thus produced by creatively adding layers to the raw original rubbing. This enhances the compositional and narrative element of the piece, in a way reminiscent of French poet and artist Henri Michaux. The French artist investigated the potential of frottage which, coupled with his interest in calligraphy and classical Chinese painting, offered him possibilities to explore the overlap between written poetry and visual art, as he practised both artforms.

These particular Michaux works are ambiguous in nature as they suggest both some form of unintelligible calligraphic statement as well as some obscure biomorphic activity, like frenzied crowds of human beings, birds in flight or micro-organisms flowing haphazardly around. Michaux’s reassembled the lines, shapes, patterns and indentations into narrative alternatives. This also holds true for Cassar’s frottages with their bio-morphic manifestations, winged figures, poetry and text. They are like mazes in which one can get lost.

In fact, Untitled X is a vortex or a mandala of flow of different elements, among which are letters of the alphabet, as the viewer is pulled in towards a centre. Untitled XX is a cauldron of chaos within the cosmos of a square, a confined space defined by geometry.

Untitled XX

There is a strong mathematical and geometrical element in all of Cassar’s Sacred Rubbings, an alchemical conundrum that is quite perplexing. However, the script outside the borders of the composition might direct the viewer towards resolution and comprehension. All of this contributes to the artistic and conceptual power of the 23 pieces. The rubbings are like ancient scrolls, like Rosetta stones, in which different languages, glyphs and numbers contrive to conceal some vital and elemental truth.

Back in his studio, the Gozitan intervenes on the raw fruit of his fieldwork, originating from diverse places. A visit to Palestine, a cradle of civilisation and the heart of the three monotheistic religions, surrendered still more material. Red, which is found across the general oeuvre of the artist, is added through stencilled symbols. Drawing is an integral part of the game for the Gozitan artist. For the past three years, he was engaged with seve­ral research projects related to an exploration of meaning and form in contemporary drawing.

This body of work investigates the concept of authorship as presented by the French thinker Roland Barthes. Cassar examines the concept of viewer’s ‘ownership’. The assimilation of various layers of meaning through the rubbing process might instigate a process of self-recognition and empathy with the particular piece and might explain the necessity to actually own the piece and take it home.

Untitled X

The artist binds his compositions with quotes and references to philosopher Michel Foucault, whose work investigated the common characteristics of power, sexuality, education, madness and incarceration. Through his Sacred Rubbings, the artist is delving deeper into Foucault’s concepts, while embarking on an organic learning experience fruitful for his artistic development.

Narratives overlap as the artist becomes the storyteller by controlling the dynamics, the syntax and the lexical semantics of the pieces. Through an attempt at deciphering, the ‘reader’ relates to and gets subliminally involved in what the artist allows to trickle through. Cassar integrates poetic and prosaic layers into a juxtaposed whole, adding a smidgeon of the circumstantial and the accidental to situations experienced, time elapsed and lives already lived. He revaluates all of this as relics and artifacts.

Sacred Rubbings is hosted by Desko Gallery at St Lucy Street, Valletta, until May 19. Log on to the gallery’s Facebook page for opening hours. It will also be exhibited at the Exhibition Hall, Ministry for Gozo, from June 1 to 25.