Narratives For Postmodern Love: Artist Gabriel Buttigieg And Curator Lisa Gwen Team Up For ‘Punch In The Stomach’ Exhibition
One of Malta’s most prolific young artists is back with another eye-catching and very on-brand exhibition after teaming up with one of the island’s top curators.
Gabriel Buttigieg, fresh from his latest artistic residency abroad, has teamed up with Lisa Gwen for Narratives for Postmodern Love – and it’s shaping up to be his biggest solo exhibition to date.
“In my art, I have always sought one thing, and one thing only. A punch in the stomach. A soul. The ecstasy and wretchedness of being human,” Gabriel tells Lovin Malta ahead of the opening.
“‘Narratives for Postmodern Love’ crystallises what I feel about the joy, loss and pain of love in our times, and all that we associate with it: memory, nostalgia, terror, desire, anticipation, disappointment, pleasure, frustration.”
“Above all, I have at last given form and colour to the notion that fuels my entire being: that it is our fleeting glimpses of death waiting for us which feed our instincts, and that is why we clutch madly at the life we have left,” he continued.
Narratives for Postmodern Love, is a visual essay that portrays the way we love, and also, perceive love, in the 21st century: confusing, multi-layered, complex, raw, uncertain… lonely, painful and fearsome.
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“I honestly consider this my boldest work yet.”
“I have at last ripped apart the veils that conceal the most intimate facets of our existence,” Buttigieg went on. “I have been to the brink with these new paintings, I admit. I want them to burst from the canvas so I can speak to you in ways I never have before. I hope you feel some of this as you view this exhibition.”
Curator Lisa Gwen penned some words ahead of the emotional exhibition:
Writhing bodies.
Not unlike those consumed by Jean-Baptiste Grenouille’s intoxicating scent,
In one of the final scenes of Süskind’s Perfume.
Layers of paint mimic overriding limbs;
Entangled pounds of flesh.
Bosoms, genitalia, mouths, eyes…
They pounce out at us.
They ambush our senses.
Alarmingly. Sporadically. Intentionally.
The more you look. The more you see.
The more you are transported into a world of
Unadulterated, unencumbered, uninhibited
Sex.
That three letter word.
Always on, or at the back of our mind.
The driver of our passions and instincts.
Unleashed at the fingertips of a man
Whose performance is as raw
As the ones he portrays.
Narratives.
Narratives for postmodern love.
Girl on girl. Boy on girl. On girls. On boys.
Alone. In tandem.
A threesome. An orgy.
Twenty-first century love.
Where anything goes.
Where everyone is in love.
With love.
With themselves. With other(s).
With the construct.
More is more.
It guides our loneliness.
Fast love; quick fix; on to the next.
Thirst and hunger satiated.
For now.
For how long?
Lisa Gwen
Monday – Friday: 3 – 8 pm
Saturday: 10 am – 4 pm
Sunday: Closed
All images by Andre Gialanze
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