by James Vella Clark
Artist Fabio Borg (b. 1974) makes a comeback to the local art scene with his eighth solo exhibition throughout October at The Palm Court Lounge, The Phoenicia Malta. Themed “Landmarks”, the artist portrays this exhibition as a collection of abstract landscapes in an homage to trees and nature.
“All my works have been produced in the studio and not en plain air, construed and made real through the brush as innate emotions being expressed onto canvas and painted by instinct. The paintings, therefore, become emotional landmarks through which I invite viewers to partake in,” says the artist.
Borg is sensitive to his surroundings and trees, or the seeming lack thereof, is one such issue often a topic of heated discussions. Therefore, in these compositions, largely produced in the last two years, trees are the main protagonists in an idealized reinterpretation of nature.
There are no buildings in sight in this collection of paintings and nothing to detract our attention from nature, except for maybe a path that leads the viewer deeper into the composition. Landscapes are hazy, dreamy, and sometimes even eerie, but they are also hauntingly beautiful.
These paintings sometimes show bursts of colour which were executed only with a limited palette. Blues, reds, and yellows are central to this collection, with The Black Trees being the one that is almost entirely monochrome and powerful. The palette employed is one of warm and cool tones that Borg created himself from the main primary colours, mixing them to achieve the depth of tone that we can experience at first hand.
They are not your typical pretty landscapes. The raw emotion that goes into the production of these paintings has also resulted in some of the compositions verging on the abstract, but these are a completely different non-representational type of painting than what Borg himself has produced in the past.
Being of Italian descent, and having also lived in Italy, Fabio Borg often gives his paintings’ titles in the Italian language. In fact, ‘Landmarks’ comes as a natural progression from ‘Radici’, a solo exhibition Fabio Borg held in April 2022 at Galleria Vittoria, one of the prestigious galleries in Rome on via Margutta. In this collection of paintings, we see a mature artist at work and one who is sensitive to issues concerning his homeland.
‘Landmarks’ will open at The Phoenicia Malta from the 3rd until the 30th of October and is curated by Dr Charlene Vella.
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