You just can’t pigeon-hole Antony Micallef – his work doesn’t fit anything resembling a genre – although plenty of art movements would love to adopt him, from street and urban to traditional painters to muralists to neo-pop, well you name it they’d like to add him to their numbers. The truth is he’s a man on a mysterious mission, unbeknownst to any other than himself, his works are disturbingly beautiful or vice-versa, and for the main, one can only stand back in wonder and awe, nourish the eye and the mind, and take the consciousness on an inward metaphysical journey somewhat equivalent to the horrors of Vietnam and back to the brash comforts of Americana and other jaded Western delights.
As I write this I can hear Barack Obama‘s acceptance speech for a Nobel Prize on the radio booming in the background, and to me this both reflects the unhinged state of our current cultural mentality, and the reflection of such a state of collective consciousness in Micallef’s work. Those in power who are not corrupt, or inherently evil, or even aim to do good are exalted, the planet suffers on so many levels that the once grand design of man, the mask of civilisation is slipping, the heat of hope and expectation is doing little more than melting the façade of life itself. To be average is to be god-like, to be flawed being the prime expectation.
At one time, or as top-down Masonic-influenced history leads us to believe, the world was a black and white dimension with little to offer than the alternatives of shades of grey, In antithesis colour via social fragmentation, cultural dilution, corporate agenda and technological leaps mean that we can as Micallef infuse the dogma of our new narrative with a spectrum of different emotional hues and shrouded in neon opinion. Yet what results in this assumed advance in humanity is a cacophony of pain and fright, metaphysical fear being the new order of the day, leaving traditional establishmentarianism including the pyramid of political influence and commerce to struggle with the impact of a race in turmoil, a Zeitgeist of confusion. For those few still unaware, oh how sweet it is to live in this colourful void, for those who view beyond the immediate, life is lived inside a broken theme park, categorised by the implications of social control and the economics of survival on a vast scale.
In the main Micallef utilises the lone figure, the sole soul as a representation of our collective core, a misguided and lost identity reaching out beyond the regions of social norms and cultural acceptability towards a once moral adjunct of abstracted humanity, left without context, history or purpose. His legion of motif, chemically imbuing emotion with the metallic tinge of artificiality and false provenance leaves one agog in a mid-space of beautiful desolation, forwarding a path between urban angst and historical relativity. We are lost, as are Micallef’s characters, too disarming and ubiquitously enticing to be treated as mere caricature. His works bleed colour from the veins of harsh yet skilfully adept line and composition, drawing the eye ever further inwards, to the subject, which is of course ourselves.
Many of his larger pieces reflect something akin to the erotica of a negative reality, the beauty of a fallen god, made palatable by the mesmerising conjuring of a fakir seeking wisdom in the nativity and gullibility of the pre-apocalyptic. However beyond the skilful gestures of a quasi high architecture of religion and belief is a base instinct, brooding, burning with rage, ready to lash out on the prospect that attack is the best form of defence. For many war, death, conflict no matter how small the arena is an ugly affair, yet Micallef as comparable to many great film directors and photographers reveals a beautiful violence, a false nostalgia of the future that is doomed to disseminate brutality as abstraction, a time lapse microscopic detail of organic symbolism held aloft, above and beyond mere context.
Antony Micallef’s background is a humble one, born in Swindon, England, in 1975, and graduating from the University of Plymouth in 2000, (now living in London), his emergence on the international arts scene has taken many by surprise, a fortuitous surprise all the same, but a surprise nevertheless. Bridging genres and sensibilities, even those of a conflicted opinion cannot help but be subsumed by the sheer extravagance of his work.
Since winning 2nd place in the BP National Portrait Awards he hasn’t looked back. moving further and further away from the shackles of strict portraiture, embracing the delights of street and urban art amalgamated with the influences of the old masters such as Caravaggio and Velázquez, and much of the great experimenters of the 20th Century, more and more comparisons have been made between his work and Francis Bacon. Although it must be noted he has recently branched out into sculpture, leaving the argument wide open (once again) between critics and their respective comparative allusions.
His combination of graphic elements with painterly gesture and garnered him a huge following, his shows have included a series of exhibitions at Lazarides Gallery, sell out events in Hollywood where many of his wealthiest collectors reside, The Tate, The Royal Academy and the infamous Tunnel 228, a series of tunnels off Leake Street, perhaps the most famous haunt for graffiti and street artists in the western hemisphere.
There are few Micallef pieces available on the open market, your best bet should you have the budget is at ArtNet.com.
