Hong Kong, May 12 – June 30, 2016, http://www.pearllam.com
One cannot but think of Francis Bacon the painter when looking at images of Micallef’s paintings. They are portraits, but anonymized and presented as a strange thick mash of skin-tone colors, hinting at the energy of a living body without freezing it in time.
Looking at the paintings itself instead of the images of the paintings, one realizes their plasticity. Paint is applied with what must be a scoop or construction spatula. The result looks a bit like those fake cake displays in show windows or like a close-up shot of a food ad. It solicits one’s touch.
The work is a clever combination of Bacon-like existentialism of desire-torn bodies and a hyper-yummy simulacrum of Koons-like seductiveness of material presence. Both repulsive and attractive.
The freshly white-painted walls rounded up the impression of this exhibition.
