Joseph Agius discusses with the artist what led to his forthcoming exhibition Colorabis Senex – Colour the Old

JA: Colorabis Senex – Colour the Old – is it maybe a reference to the subject matter, landscapes as old as time itself that have not yet been contaminated by human activity? Or is it maybe an autobiographical reference as maturity settles in?

PG: This exhibition is my experimenting in the format of a pop-up exhibition. So, it feels like an introduction of sorts. I would not say that I’m only referring to the old as in the context of the old building in Mdina that is hosting this exhibition. Mdina is my birthplace, I’m used to this kind of environment. The ‘new’ refers to the fact that this is an exercise in colouring the old; it’s because my paintings are very colourful.

JA: The painting Portomaso features a relatively recent addition to the landscape. Do you think that eventually these modern high-rises will essentially merge with the traditional landscape and become part and parcel of the urban fabric? Or will such buildings still stick out as sore thumbs in the course of time?

PG: Absolutely, they always will be blemishes and eyesores. I’m not trying to blend in Portomaso; it will never blend in. But, like other buildings cropping all over the country, the urban landscape is developing into just blocks. Eventually, there will no longer be flat linear horizontal landscapes but rather boxes on top of each other.

I’m attempting to minimilise as much as possible which is very difficult, trying only to suggest buildings in the compositions. It’s a process through which I’m trying to integrate the second and third dimensions into my landscapes.

Rolling Hillside at Sunset

JA: The title seems to suggest that colour invigorates. You are an artist whose paintings sing with colour. Do we need colour to disguise existential drabness that goes beyond the landscape itself?

PG: Yes, my colour influences are from the light. In these new landscapes, I’m emphasising more on the reflection of other colours and abstracting my landscapes through colour. In these works, there are boxes representing buildings or salt pans, which in a sense are perhaps intrinsically drab. So, adding colour to that drabness can improve the spirit of the landscape.

My artworks have mostly been ‘representational’ and my recent works over the past year have also been ‘non-representational’ (abstract works), however these are somewhat ill-fitting and inadvertently misleading terms. I feel that my abstract works are representational, to varying degrees — shapes (landscapes) that look like something else, colours resemble something else in real life, and may represent emotions, moods, thoughts, and thus, are entirely representational.

Aerial Salts

JA: David Hockney is the giant that you mention many times as an obvious influence. I feel that your current work explores other worlds besides Hockney’s. It is more structureless generally. Which other artists have become references, maybe Diebenkorn and Hitchens? The title of one of the paintings, Rooftops and Saltpans, reminds one of Esprit Barthet and Harry Alden. Where do you feel that you are heading, artistically speaking?

PG: I honestly don’t know where I’m heading. I have been looking at Edward Hopper and his way of flattening the imagery. I’m interested in the geometric period of Barthet but not that much in Alden as his work is too graphic for my taste. I’ve been looking at Diebenkorn’s work as well.

Nevertheless, having viewed and enjoyed the abstract magnificence of Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frakenthaler, Clyfford Still, Lee Krasner and Ad Reinhardt, among countless other talented artists scrambling to carve out their own signature definitive abstracted ‘style’, it is entirely understandable, in my opinion, that on reaching the point where you understand composition, form and the relationship between colours well enough, you create abstract images that can, say, evoke emotion. With some of the new works on exhibit, there are no visual references for a viewer to relate to, only colour, shapes, and their composition, notwithstanding that their title reflects a point of departure.

Abstracting Gozo

JA: Does this mean that the launchpad is becoming more the philosophy behind art?

PG: Yes, that is the path I have recently been pursuing. One philosophy that left a mark on me is that behind Wassily Kandinsky’s Composition VII, 1913, at Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery. The most important reason is the evidence that points towards this asymmetry being the result of tangible neurological differences. In a study several years ago, later shared by the BBC, neuroscientist Luca Ticini discovered that when magnetic pulses are applied to certain areas of the brain, our appreciation of abstract or figurative art can change. When we look at visually pleasing artworks, the pleasure centres in our brain are activated.

JA: Do the teachings of your tutors, when you were a student of architecture and design at the Jacob Kramer College in Leeds in the 1970’s, still resurface, maybe subliminally?

PG: My design education in the 1970’s, especially imbued in De Stijl by my tutor Wilf Franks, a past student from the Bauhuas in 1930, has been reverberated by artists such as Mondrian. A perfect example is his 1919 Dialogue on the New Plastic; Mondrian explains how he “very gradually” arrived at the straight lines of De Stijl, starting with the complex lines found in nature: “First I abstracted the capricious, then the freely curved, and finally the mathematically curved.”

Of Rooftops and Saltpans

This use of the term abstraction as a verb suggests a process; by gradually “pulling away” the contingencies and imperfections of natural objects, the artist can gradually purify nature of its “accidents” to discover its essence. This process would eventually lead to a spiritual abstract art, abstraction as a noun, as Mondrian had already realised in a note written in a sketchbook around 1912-1914: “If one conceived of these forms as increasingly simple and pure, commencing with the physical visible forms of appearance, then one passes through a world of forms ascending from reality to abstraction. In this manner one approaches Spirit, or purity itself.” 

Learning one’s entire appreciation for abstract or figurative art is merely the result of something that can be flipped like a light switch is admittedly a bit depressing; especially so if, like an artist, such appreciation dominates your day-to-day life. From my perspective, this wider deficit presents an incredibly exciting time.

Portomaso

Garigue Surt

Fields of Gold

Colorabis Senex – Colour the Old, hosted at 4, Triq l-Imħażen Mdina, is on between March 31 and April 8. Opening hours are from 10am to 1pm on March 31 and April 2 and from 10am to 3pm on April 1, 6 and 8. Consult the artist’s Facebook page for more information.