Giorgio de Chirico’s Arte Metafisica is peopled by mannequins, faceless and lacking identity, juxtaposed upon surreal urban landscapes, the backdrop at times being the magnificent piazzas of Turin. Solitary or in couples, these characters are lost in introspection in the former case, or in unfathomable conversation in the latter. They are humanoids entrapped in an armour that hides individuality and that prohibits identification. These enigmatic personages nod back to a historical past, Italy’s in this case, similar to Mimmo Paladino’s stylised and minimalised human figures that refer to an Etruscan past, among other civilisations.

In The Lovers II of 1928, Magritte shrouds the mutually well-known identity of the kissing couple, pondering on the niggling mistrust of misidentification, even through the expression of the most basic of human emotion. The kiss becomes an occasion of fetish and adventure, as one questions the gender and identity in the intimacy, when one of the five senses is so categorically subdued.

The Double Slit Experiment

Joseph Farrugia explores this iconography, this existential threat to being one’s own person or misidentifying a companion, this dissolution into the background noise of contemporary chaos. His Pilgrim’s Memoirs is an interaction, his own with the mannequin or hooded person who looks away from us. The artist is steadfast in his gaze, even though forlorn, his eyes in an expression of discomfort that could be instigated by the close proximity of his featureless and uncommunicative companion.

In his September 2022 exhibition titled residue, Farrugia stated that he was inspired by Thomas Young’s Double Slit Experiment which debated that light and matter can exist in both particle form and wave form. However, the transience in Internal Journey and Introspection evoke the oeuvre of French symbolist Odilon Redon, who claimed that the faces he portrays were those encountered in dreams.

The Night

Farrugia’s depictions could similarly be regarded as representations of the oneiric and the spiritual, an extrapolation of Young’s discovery and the dualities of life and afterlife, the soul as an otherworldly manifestation of the body, with death (or sleep) as the semi-permeable membrane or diffraction grating.

In Jasper Johns’s Seasons, a human shadow lacking volume is often taken to represent the artist himself, drawing parallels with Picasso’s The Shadow of 1953. There is this dissolution of identity, at the mercy of the seasonal elements. Spring is rainy, with diagonal striations interacting with the ghostly representation; Summer means strong sunlight, with the shadow being well-defined and solid; for Fall, Johns interprets the word literally, as he dissects his shadow into two, with the left part seeming to lose balance and threaten to fall out of the painting’s perspective; for Winter, the shadow merges with the snowfall, menacing dissolution and death. The shadows are linked with seasonal symbols and the cycle of life.

This exhibition, encompassing decades of work by Joseph Farrugia, should be an eye-opener to the general art-loving public

Reflections somehow elicits comparisons with the elemental dissolution of Johns’s Winter, as coloured particles invade the facial perimeters, while the brilliant yellow ground, the negative space, nods towards Gothic and Byzantine iconography.

Austrian art historian Otto Pächt once said: “Medieval gold ground was always interpreted as a symbol of transcendental light….. eternal cosmic space dissolved at its most palpable in the unreal, or even, in the supernatural.” The temporal and the mystical are factors of each other, the darkness of the human immediate, contrasted with the brilliant abstract impalpability of the beyond, this is also evident in Redon’s symbolist work.

Portrait of a Heartbeat, which is a geometrical abstraction at face value, is intriguing as one can make out a ghostly ellipsoid, smiling face. The juxtaposition is not only restricted to the artist’s intentional ones; in fact, one’s own baggage of subconscious imagery can suggest a sudarium of sorts. Similarly, The Space Between Generations can resolve into a female torso.

The Nomad

Through the juxtaposition of elements, such as a fountain-pen nib and a coat hanger in Nomad, Farrugia strives towards a surreal Magrittian representation of identity, playing on the human mind’s aptitude to create images and human forms through the integration of seemingly mundane and unconnected elements. This is succinctly defined by the Belgian surrealist words: “Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.” In Priest, the coat hanger looms like an interrogation mark, asking the question if an ornate chasuble resolves the dark silhouette into the intimations of a priest. The coat hanger is an element that is common in other compositions, such as The Silence, maybe a pop reference to Jim Dine’s similarly themed oeuvre.

Semiotics, fish and other creatures

Although a staple of the Maltese diet, Farrugia’s depicts fish in different configurations and contexts.

A Gathering of Like-Minded Souls and Lazarus are complimentary pieces, being both paintings on tiles, contributing to compartmentalisation of the composition into a grid-like pattern. One can decipher a social comment, the sole sardine, in its can, enjoys solitude in imprisonment. It is more colourful and alive than its crowded counterparts that are jostled into a tight Andre Masson-like composition. Meanwhile, The Day of the Fish is reminiscent of synthetic cubism, even though Farrugia doesn’t make use of collage in this case.

Lazarus

The fish imagery is central to Farrugia, and one wonders if it’s a pop representation or if there is more than meets the eye, maybe even a biblical reference. The symbol of the fish in Paleo-Christianity and ancient Hellenistic Christianity represents Jesus Christ via the acronym Ichtus which translates as ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour’. Icthus is Greek for fish, hence the semiotic Christian relevance of the stylised fish imagery.

In Meeting Spiru Again, disconcerting imagery, a sketchy representation of an equilateral triangle, with rays emanating, replaces the lone fish of Lazarus. The sacred analogy could be carried forward, the geometrical shape representing the Holy Trinity as a factor of Ichtus, the Son of God.

The triptych State of Becoming shows a progressive abstraction of marine creatures through a perspective which zooms in, thus evoking a Masson or Lee Krasner proto-abstract expressionism. Thus, Farrugia explores the relativity of perspective, that anything representational could be abstracted to its pure building blocks. A Philip Guston richly chromatic pinkish red is suggestive of blood, of plasma, of passion, of what makes life tick at the cellular level.

A Gathering of Like-minded Souls

Angst, in deep blues, explores the Maltese artist’s preoccupation with fauna, claustrophobically enclosing the tentacled creature in a golden prison, entangled in its new decontextualised and sorrowful reality, maybe a comment on contemporary ostracisation and existential asphyxiation.

This exhibition, encompassing decades of work by Farrugia, should be an eye-opener to the general art-loving public. His career has witnessed thematic and stylistic changes along these four decades, an evolution that puts the artist at the forefront of Maltese contemporary art.

Nous, hosted by MUŻA, is on until October 1.