The Malta Independent on Sunday
Remember / Dismember – Chapter 1
With great pleasure and excitement, we announce the third solo exhibition by DARREN TANTI at il-Kamra ta’ Fuq, in Mqabba.
The exhibition opened last Friday and runs till the 18 June, at il-Kamra ta’ Fuq, Mqabba. For more information, follow ‘il-Kamra ta’ Fuq’ on Facebook.
It is no secret that Darren Tanti is one of my absolute favourite artists on the island and it comes with great proof as I can boast that currently, I am his top collector (and I intend to remain so). We have worked together on various projects and with more to come. He is also part of the team at Art Sweven and most importantly, he is one of my very best friends.
As always with Darren, things always have to be outside the box. For his first exhibition at ilKamra ta’ Fuq, Ahmar Ħelu w’Qares, we had four huge artworks, which was no easy feat to get them inside the space… and we even had an artwork hanging to the ceiling, all creating an intimate space or almost a ‘chapel’ atmosphere. Last November, for his exhibition Inaction is a Weapon of Mass Destruction, we transformed the exhibition room into a clinical white cube, by actually building a room within our room. And for this current exhibition which includes a number of large works, we shall not disappoint those expecting something different, but more about this later on.
In Remember / Dismember Chapter 1, Tanti is performing a memory exercise or experiment where he is exploring his relationship, as an artist and art-passionate, to historical artworks and the possibilities that lie within the reinterpretation of these artworks. He is recreating and reinterpreting famous historical paintings through his memory and analyzing how he can ‘build an artwork’ only from memory. He was really surprised to find out how difficult it was to ‘recreate’ artworks from memory alone. This led him to extract the generic picture from his mind and transfer it on canvas in a very abstracted way - primarily focusing on colour, composition, light, and shade. Afterward, he would superimpose an accurate depiction (or at least selected parts) of the actual painting onto the abstractions. This process revealed an interesting insight into his ability to recall a historical artwork - one would find correct use of colour and composition, wrong assumptions, interesting coincidences, and new possibilities. All artworks produced a unique and interesting result.
The artworks presented in this exhibition are all reinterpretations of famous paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries. Just to mention some examples, a number of large works include works by Caravaggio - Judith Beheading Holofernes, Supper At Emmaus, and David with the Head of Goliath and a small work portrays the Ecce Homo. A number of works are by Velazquez which include amongst others, The Portrait of the Infanta Margarita and a large self-portrait. Our own Christ Holding the Cross, by Guido Reni, from MUŻA is also reinterpreted in all his glory and is included in the exhibition. Three small works are reinterpreting Girl with Red Hat, The
Lacemaker, and The Milkmaid, all by Vermeer, which resulted in a totally abstract style, and just the silhouettes of the figures can be observed, compared to the larger works which show some realism executed in grisaille. Three medium works depicting three portraits all on a background of dramatic red, are portraying a self-portrait of Jan Van Dyke, and the other two portraits are two female contemporary faces, titled Gazing Female 1 and Gazing Female 2 - the only two ‘figurative’ works which are not re-interpretations of older paintings. Another two of the large works are completely abstract - one, titled, Abstract after Dwarf Sitting on the Floor, is showing predominantly hues of green and can be seen almost as part of a diptych with another reinterpreted work by Velazquez, Dwarf Sitting on the Floor. The other abstract is largely showing a red approach with a magnificent central shower of gold, titled Essence of Pope Innocent X.
Tanti has also included 6 hanging sculptures executed in alto relievo (high relief). Each of these is representing a face of Christ, replicated in six different ‘shocking’ colours - a bit of Andy Warhol effect, if you like.
And back to the exhibition set up, we decided to hang the artworks using the ‘salon-hang’ style. The original works which Tanti interpreted are almost all from the 17th and 18th centuries. One can assume that the originals used to hang in palaces and museums of the late 18th century and 19th century. If you have visited palaces still showcasing their art collection or seen photos of museums’ collections from the 19th century, you’ll notice that the artworks used to cover all the walls from floor to ceiling. And we decided to do just that at il-Kamra ta’ Fuq - practically wrap the walls in artworks.
Of course, the case where an artist decides to reinterpret famous paintings from history is not new. An interesting case in point is when The Städel Museum, in Frankfurt, had commissioned the artist John Baldessari to reinterpret artworks from their collection. The approach was very different from what Darren is doing here. Though the juxtaposition element is found in both projects, Baldassari’s approach was to juxtapose fragments of text from screenplays with visual details scanned from famous works at the Städel.
You might have noticed that ‘CHAPTER 1’ is included in the exhibition title. In fact, this is just the beginning of this series and the artist has already been working on further variations on this experiment with memory and art. I can’t say much more, but Chapter 2 is ready to go and he has just started Chapter 3, and the first artwork from Chapter 3 has already been added to my collection.
These works are creating a continuum within art history. When visiting, expect to be enveloped in our little room packed with art from floor to ceiling and be ready to try to guess which famous artworks are being reinterpreted by Tanti. (We will also help you a bit by providing QR codes with information about the original paintings).
And to conclude, a few words about our Darren Tanti, not that he needs much introduction. He has participated in numerous art projects and exhibitions in international contexts. Some of the most prestigious exhibitions that Tanti participated in are ‘Time, Space, Existence’ at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2014 and ‘HomoMelitensis’ as one of the artists representing Malta in the Venice Biennale of Art, 2017. Apart from the different awards received, Tanti has won ‘Divergent Thinkers 2’ and he was shortlisted for ‘The Commonwealth Young Achievers Award, 2015’. Tanti has exhibited in the last 3 editions of The APS Mdina Cathedral Contemporary Art Biennale. One can find artworks by Tanti in the National Collection of Art in MUŻA and The Embassy of the Republic of Malta in Washington D.C.