joseph calleja: October 2012

'Joseph Calleja’s large ‘portrait’ made of his friends’ Facebook profile pictures was one of the most freshest and contemporary takes in the exhibition, yet the fact that it was a ‘resolved’, locked puzzle, killed the interactive power of the piece.'

http://redwhitemt.com/2012/images-of-the-self/

I have just finished college and it seems inevitable - looking back at my work trying to see what am I really looking at... what am I about... what am I trying to say /achieve.

I would like to start writing about my work - mainly as notes to myself, making my position hover between that of the author and spectator, thinking about its stronger points and its shortcomings. I appreciate shortcomings in a work. It makes it more mortal, real and alive. In actual fact I'd have it this way rather than seeing my work flying the banner of synonymity with a signature of recognition and perfection. I would also rather present my point of view that aiming at something that has never been done before. Real rather than Perfect. True rather than Genial. Finite rather than Immortally numb.

I started this post with an extract from a review of the exhibition Wicc imb Wicc. Pawlu gave me a great tap on the back for my work 'Għidli ma' min...' dropping adjectives of 'freshest' and 'most contemporary' against my work.

But I used this extract not to underline those two elements or the shortcoming pointed out by the reviewer (as to its interactivity). I used it because, for the first time, (perhaps this being my first proper exhibition as an artist and not a student) I just realised how the work stopped belonging to me and my thoughts the moment it was viewed by anyone else. As a student I wrote an essay about the 'death of the author'. This was when I experienced a side of that.

This piece was about self-portraiture. As I tend to struggle with my works with a tendency of being loaded with meaning, I thought that this was a characteristic of my personality and it would not harm the piece if there was an element of that in it. More than aiming to do a work of art, I wanted to give across a point of view riddled with underlying meanings. A puzzle with more than one probable solution was only one side to that.

There are several elements that make this piece short of being successful, I think. But these same elements are the ones that make the piece more humane, vulnerable, fallible and synonymous to myself.

The element that did not work (as I intended), in this exhibition was - each cell depicting a profile of one of my friends. This part of the work overtook the conceptual and formal existence of the whole piece - Most viewers with the ability to recognise their common friends or publicly renowned profiles have just seen this at the expense of everything else the piece stated.

It might have worked well or better at least if this piece was exhibited in a country where it is highly unlikely that any viewer could have recognised anybody's profile. It was for me a fascinating experience, something that I overlooked. In a way it could have not been truer to me than to have the public passing by the real meaning. But I remind myself, to make a distinction between the intention triggering the work, and the resulting work itself. I should have known this by now.

Another experience was when one person pulled me aside to show me the their knowledge of forced perspective applied by the skull painting in the Holbein's work:

I had to smile at this as the person apologised for their remark in the same statement for not to hurt my feelings. I smiled because when I used forced perspective I thought more of the RBS logo on Murrayfield's stadium than Holbein's work.

It was never my intention to make a work about the innovative nature of forced perspective. And even if I was the first one to use this technique, making a such a statement in a work with another agenda would have never worked. I simply used forced perspective as a tool - a solution to link the two puzzles together through the viewer only (i.e the portraits would look from the front only from a precise point in between the two puzzles as seen from the viewer).

As I said, for me it is a learning curve, always. Just because I am not a student anymore does not mean this tension has stopped.

It is interesting what jumps out at the viewer, and how little control I have over it. In a way I do not want to control the viewer. I have an agenda when I make a work. Most of the times I have to strip away my agenda s and influences from the work itself, in order for a piece to work. So at least I can say that I never have a list behind a work that i expect the viewer is supposed to get when seeing my work.

One thing that stayed present in my practice since I can remember trying to do something worth doing is the experimental approach. One positive thing about this way of working is that I always end up with a set of new questions, which keeps my inquiry fresh.

I NEVER depart with an aim of composing the 'best' or 'most perfect' work! The being 'original'. I despise such terminology when I want to describe my art practice as this is not what I am trying to achieve, not a priori at least.

If a work ends up with such elements, its fine, however some of the best things that happened in my work, I had to learn to read after the work was finished. It seems as if my work is always those few stages ahead of me.