“I need to produce great ideas, and I believe that if I were commissioned to design a new universe, I would be mad enough to undertake it.” – Giovanni Battista Piranesi

One comes across many instances in which artists who could boast an enviable oeuvre kept a low profile, showing a reluctance to exhibit for a variety of reasons. It could originate from a diffidence with the established gallery culture, or a sensitivity that abhors the limelight. One can mention the late American street photographer Vivian Maier (1926-2009) whose superlative repertoire of over 150,000 photographs was unpublished and unknown, and only discovered with her personal belongings after her death. Her consecration as a foremost street photographer was thus established posthumously.

Maltese art aficionados, thanks to social media, are up to date with the local art scene and the plethora of art exhibitions, indicative of a healthy cultural environment. However, some artists prefer relative anonymity by staying away from such avenues and showing their artistic creations only occasionally via social media. Jon Grech, now in his late 40s, is such an example. Thankfully, unlike Maier, he occasionally engages with the public via actual exhibitions.

A House of Glass is only his third solo in a career spanning over three decades. His first solo dates back to the late 1990s, followed by Ex Voto, in 2016, hosted at a private chapel in Mosta. The 1990s were a very instructive decade for Grech, who sought out artist Raymond Pitré for mentorship and artistic direction.

Pitré’s cavernous studio, full of impressive existentialist and expressionist canvases, together with some of the most exceptional of Maltese 20th-century sculpture, was indeed a source of inspiration for the young artist just out of his teens. Even in those early years, Grech showed a marked maturity in his expressionist canvases. These mostly auto­bio­graphical works, brutally honest and raw, were pictorial chapters in the story of a young, tormented soul.

A House of Glass is the title of Grech’s third solo exhibition.

I have followed Grech’s artistic journey since those early days. For some years, he left Malta and lived in Czechia; however, his love of mathematics, literature, chess, algorithms and art didn’t abandon him. Eventually, he returned to Malta and rea­lised it was time for another solo. In 2015 and early 2016, he was working on a series of paintings thematically linked to the life of Jesus Christ.

Fragmentation and transparency

The fragmentary narrative of those works has been carried forward to his current exhibition. The paintings in his Ex Voto 2016 exhibition focused on fragments of Renaissance and baroque masterpieces of world art, in a perspective that leaves out the general narrative. They worked like visual prompts, like parts of a jigsaw in which all the other pieces have gone missing. These paintings were excerpts, ‘fragments’ of the larger canvas which could be admired in the Louvre, the Prado and other museums.

Space is shattered and reconfigured

A House of Glass refers also to fragmentation, but this time it relates to visual perspective, rather than Ex Voto’s visual thematic disorientation. The title of the exhibition points towards transparency, towards the viewer as a voyeur. There is a slight reference to the Orphic Cubism of Robert Delaunay (1885-1941) and Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979), as well as to that of Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956).

However, Grech refrains from their colourful abstraction as figuration is what essentially defines him. The oeuvre of Italian artist Leonardo Cremonini (1925-2010), his deconstruction of domestic spaces and realigning of perspectives bear affinities with these particular Grech canvases. One also encounters in Grech the movement in repose via the inhabitants of these ‘dwellings’, a Renaissance prerogative, as in the work of Felice Casorati (1883-1963).

Visitors admiring some of Grech’s paintings.

The juxtaposition of narratives elicits a prism in which space is shattered and reconfigured, while storylines refract into rather absurd morality tales. This reorientation reverses the indoors/outdoors axis, and enclosed space opens up and time becomes relativistic. The inherent properties of the ‘house’, its solidity and its geometry are fluidified while musicians solemnly play their concertos.

The music of chance

“Nothing was real except chance” claims contemporary American author Paul Auster in his novel City of Glass. However, Grech’s pieces, although seemingly and intentionally haphazard in composition, are not Burroughs/Gysin cut-ups in which new narratives are the fruit of pure chance.

Grech is like a master conjurer, digging into his bag of tricks – one that includes his superb artistic technique and his enviable knowledge of world art, to rearrange and subdue murmuring scenarios into finite and silent spaces. This is indeed an exhibition not to be missed.

A House of Glass, hosted at Camilleri Paris Mode, Rabat, is on until mid-December. Consult the venue’s Facebook page for opening hours and more information.