The eye of the beholder

Victor Ferrante Busuttil reviews Sandro Delimara Poole's latest exhibition of his works, Images and Association, at the Charlatana Gallery, Kuncizzjoni.

All the works exhibited in Sandro's latest showing are so typically him. After his last somewhat avant-garde exhibition at Madame Yvette Poseur's soirée last summer, he's returned to his questing, probing style of earlier days.

Some 60 pieces - canvasses, sculptures and installations - make up this showing. The centrepiece of the whole presentation is his enormous installation, which fills a small exhibition room and which Sandro has entitled Tsunami. It comprises a bidet-like centrepiece, from which emerges a single elevated jet of water. This obviously symbolises the tidal wave that caused so much mayhem and destruction in the Indian Ocean a few months back.

There is no doubt that Tsunami is a deeply emotional centrepiece and after viewing it I left the room with a much more profound understanding of the mysteries of life, death and the multifarious philosophies of the Orient.

Another of Sandro's works to catch the eye is a huge canvas entitled War on What? This is an emotionally charged piece, a three-metre square Prussian blue canvas dominated by a centrally sited, exciting and... yes, exhilarating explosion of whitish yellowish violet paint. It is quite obviously an eloquent indictment on the vagaries of war at its most terrible.

On the evidence of this latest exhibition, it is plain that Sandro Delimara Poole is developing rapidly into one of Malta's most important artists.

Now, off the record and strictly for your eyes only, Mr Editor, this is what I really thought of that sh... - load of excrement:

I mean... honestly. Any child of pre-school years, with a good aim and a dollop of paint, could have created most, if not all, of those inept daubs on show.

And as for that bidet. suffice it to say that Tracy Emin's unmade bed was great art by comparison. To use the words pretentious crap would be doing a grave disservice to every talent-challenged amateur dauber who has ever committed artistic GBH.

I wouldn't hire this guy to whitewash my garage. I've seen better paint jobs on 1960s Ford Escorts. This so-called artist has the imagination of a neutered slug, the prescience and foresight of a closeted nun, the technique of a quadriplegic degenerate and the charm of Mike Tyson.

Over the years, Mr Editor, you have asked me to review some pretty grotesque crap, but this load of old garbage really does take the biscuit. And to see all those "distinguished" art "experts" drooling over every splodge of randomly hurled pigment is, quite frankly, sad.

I was standing in front of one particular mess... that looked like something our Rottweiler regularly throws up, when I heard one grande dame of the local art world bellow: "It's his use of colour I so adore... and all that latent symbolism. That... that thing down there in the right-hand corner, it's not a salami, you know". Have you ever heard such pretentious crap in all your life? (Yes I have, actually... You've written a fair bit of it yourself... Ed)

All I ask, Mr Editor, is that you send me to cover the odd exhibition by artists with talent. We do have a few, you know. And Sandro Delimara is certainly not among them. To see the talentless dumbhead hanging on every sycophantic syllable of the grotesquely fat broad that opened the "exhibition" made me want to throw up. (You and your Rottweiler seem to be having trouble keeping your food down today... Ed).

If I had my way I would get hold of that inept Sandro whatsit thing, sit him on top of his naff bloody bidet, then turn the jet up to full-on pressure. Please... I beg you, don't send me to any more bogus exhibition openings. And especially don't send me to any where they are only serving cheap local wine.