As you enter Gallery 23 in Balzan the paintings immediately strike you. The opulent richness of colour is striking but particularly marvellous blues predominate. This is opening night for Kevin Sciberras’s latest exhibition, Urban Perspectives. The artist is best known for his paintings of Maltese architectural landmarks. He is mainly inspired by his physical surroundings especially by urban scapes that are completely devoid of figures. There are no people in Kevin’s paintings. Just buildings.
The art of Kevin Sciberras is a wide open window on the world around him. The general impression his paintings convey is clear cut.
He has held several exhibitions and participated in collective ones, too. He is a popular artist and his reputation has always stood very high. He captures local streetscapes with elegance and precision. From traditional balconies to church domes, aerial views and street corners, he assimilates the atmosphere of places, landscape and the environment and relates them to us on canvas.
Many of us make it a point to go to museums both here and abroad. A friend insists that a museum “is the place where we look at old stuff made by dead people.” As a museum addict I disagree with her wholeheartedly. However, there is something refreshing about going to an art gallery and looking at recently painted works of art and get a chance to actually meet the artist.
The world of art is filled with stories of itinerant artists who reinvigorated their work outside the confines of standardized living. Jean Dubuffet journeyed to the Sahara to live among the Bedouin tribespeople. Gaugin leaving his seed wherever he travelled with resulting children, famously went to Tahiti. However, I believe that Kevin Sciberras still finds plenty to paint on home ground. His focus is architecture and in his paintings architecture is king. But he gives his work his own interpretation; his own trademark. In a collective exhibition you immediately know which paintings are his. After all culture, like so many virtues, begins at home and Kevin’s paintings are homegrown. They are infused with ambience and light. There is a dreamlike quality about them, a timeless quality. “Within his art, some details remain sharp, while others drift into obscurity, enhancing the mysterious nature of his subjects.”
Like so many of us he is concerned about the impact of modernisation on cultural heritage. He speaks through his art.
The gallerists of Gallery 23, Perit Alexia Rausi and Rachel Said who has qualifications in art know how to put an exhibition together. Their launches are always interesting and an occasion to meet likeminded people of all ages, especially art lovers.
All of us have been to exhibitions which are sorry affairs. However, I say, let even mediocre artists paint, why not? If it makes them happy. Then there are artists who become famous by exhibiting their unmade bed. I read somewhere in a foreign newspaper the advice of an art critic: ‘Think carefully before you throw away that old shirt. It may be a work of art.’ Thank goodness there are people like Kevin who is a gifted artist. His art needs no explanation. He has not been seduced by the fashionable doctrines of the moment. His paintings have unflinching intensity. He has developed a voice of his own. He would never imagine his old shirt and handkerchiefs may turn out to be closet works of art. Kevin’s art forms the bridge between our architecture – we still have some good pieces left in spite of the architectural delirium which has plagued these islands like foot and mouth disease. Kevin approaches painting as though what he is painting has never been painted before. Always with fresh eyes.
This exhibition was a sellout from the first day. Remember what Michelangelo said to an artist who was showing him his sculptures in the studio and arranging the light to the greatest advantage: “Don’t bother about that. It is by the light of the marketplace that it will be judged.” What else?
Urban Perspectives remains open until next Sunday 20th October. Open days Sundays 11am-12.30pm. Wednesdays 6.30pm to 8pm. Or by appointment: [email protected] or Mob 99428272. Gallery 23, 23 Idmejda street, Balzan.
