DESK NO. 1 | VAN MALTESE

The work of Van Maltese (Toronto, 1988) is a contemporary investigation focused on visual and cognitive perception, a thorough study exploring the type of subconscious illusion that tends to relate random forms to familiar objects (also known as pareidolia). Just as one might see a sleeping dragon in the profile of a cloud in the sky, in Maltese’s artworks, the gaze is equally deceived, deliberately misled.

Desk no. 1 was created by reproducing a sort of simulated collage – as a painting and not physically cut, assembled, or glued – playing with the absence/presence of images and forms. Maltese’s intent is to gather forms and elements, more or less known, and then challenge their reality through representation by painting the surface of a table with brown and green stains and ‘placing’ the selected objects on it.
In the illusion of the image, some hands appear to be cut from a lined sheet and then randomly taped to the sides with tape; in the same lined sheet, the absence of circled and curved forms can be noticed.
Another sheet – thinner, longer, and gray – has been folded accordion-style, becoming like a staircase, a clear reference to the master of illusion, Escher. The famous optical illusion of Rubin’s vase is also incorporated into the artwork: the proximity of two faces, almost attached to each other, creates, in contrast to the background, the shape of a vase.

The choice to represent these elements as if they were placed on a desk, a workbench, reveals the intention to study and delve into similar visual phenomena. However, the bench is not positioned on the floor but rather hung on the wall, although not adherent but in relief.

Desk no. 1 is part of a composition that includes a total of eight pieces, all with the same dimensions and united by the same speckled background, but each characterized by different elements. Different, though sometimes recurring, as if the entire project were an attempt to recompose the same elements in different compositions, seeking time to time illusions or interpretations not yet discovered.

Van Maltese
Desk no. 1, 2021
Oil on panel, wood frame, 76.83cm x 154.61cm x 18.41cm (30.25″ x 60.87″ x 7.25″)
© Van Maltese, courtesy the artist

Van Maltese, “Desk no. 1”, 2021
Oil on panel, wood frame, 76.83cm x 154.61cm x 18.41cm. Installation view, “Fact or Fiction”, June 18 – July 24, 2021, Cooper Cole Toronto. Courtesy the artist ©

20/12/2023