In our day and age, it's more about capturing the image of a moment rather than living that experience. Carpe Imagines is perhaps the new Carpe Diem. We at Art Sweven and il-Kamra ta' Fuq are delighted to be exhibiting Nicole Sciberras Debono's first solo exhibition Lost in the ether

First things first, what do we understand with the exhibition title: Lost in the ether? Quoting from Sciberras Debono's exhibition synopsis: "To be 'lost in the ether', is to say that one is engrossed in a communication or visual that has no fixture in space or time; it has no precise location or context."

The body of works forming this exhibition is showing individuals lost in these intimate moments, such as lost in thought, contorting oneself in strange positions, bathroom selfies, sleeping moments or in the act of avoiding waking up with the exception of two artworks where the human figure is not present, but which still capture lonely (disturbing?) thoughts.

Sciberras Debono is an emerging young artist who happened to completely grab my attention when I was reviewing applications via an open call for a major collective exhibition last year. And a year later, here we are. This exhibition will be showcasing works in oils - the medium which she says enables her to communicate her visions into visuals most freely.

Delving more into the technicalities, one must emphasise how painterly and raw her works are and of course this is intentionally done and has become her signature style. One can say that this might be reflecting the current trend of the digital surge, where apps are constantly being released which turn photos into artworks or cartoons or avatars, where the real becomes irreal, though not surreal. In the last few years, we started seeing a rise and comeback in figurative art and hyperrealism which became "trendy" again after all the abstraction and deconstruction portrayed in works of art - perhaps now it is time again for a painting to actually look like a painting.

To achieve this, Sciberras Debono uses flat brushes, enabling her to create linear and angular brush strokes. She sometimes applies no varnish to her paintings and there are two reasons for this. Firstly, the medium she makes use of looks already like varnish, and secondly, without varnish, "the painting will age gracefully" and thus emphasising this need for the painting to really look like a painting. One of her main influences is artist Ruprecht Von Kaufmann where the similar palette (even brighter and bolder in Nicole's works) and also the subject matter is quite evident. And speaking of subject matter...

Sciberras Debono started researching and exploring this theme in 2021. The works express a young feeling, a sense of the digital era, not even of Facebook, but specifically of Instagram. One of the main reasons lies in the fact that Sciberras Debono is part of an international group of artists who share their thoughts and model for each other by sharing reference photos through online channels. In fact, all individuals portrayed in this exhibition are artists themselves within this artistic community, while Nicole is a model for these artists, as well as in some works present in this exhibition too. The community is called Cane-Yo and artists help each other with discussions, workshops and some of them even managed to meet up in Antwerp where they held a collective exhibition of their works. The collective, titled Wish you were here, was held at Dalek Art Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium. A quick search for the group on Instagram will explain a lot!

The subject revolves around the lonely moments lost in thought or in dreams, maybe a ramification of the semi lockdown and detachment experienced in the last couple of years. A self-portrait is included, entitled I can't help but pull the earth around me to make my bed, where we see a sleeping Nicole and a more Instagrammable snapshot of her feet in Radiator.

A number of artworks depict bizarre positions - something one might decide to explore out of boredom or out of the need to create a photo worthy of Instagram such as Hydrophobia, Bend/Over/Backwards, This dream isn't feeling sweet and an intriguing mysterious narrative in I put on the crown of clowns & melt slowly to the ground. More intimate moments are captured in bed, in two artworks, the strongest one being Sleep it out, where the person is stuck in the lovely or hateful moment between sleeping and awakening, between the conscious and the subconscious - a moment that is ideally experienced alone with no intrusion whatsoever - a moment which can decide the fate of the coming day. Condensation, 3 mirrors and Girl with iPhone and nose ring show typical selfies, so reminiscent of the artist's generation.

My personal favourite is Golden Hour Eigengrau which is perhaps one of the first artworks that was executed and which forms part of Lost in the ether. It's an artwork that probably made my heart skip a beat the first time I landed on Nicole's website, and which was also exhibited in a major collective exhibition in 2021. I think it really encapsulates what the phrase "lost in the ether" triggers in me. The portrait of this young woman shows her annoyed? Sad? Irritated? Blinded by the sun? Basically, we are lost in the ether as much as she is when trying to figure it out. The colour palette here is exquisitely balanced where the orange/pinkish palette is heavily contrasting with the eigengrau (dark grey colour forming the upper part of the painting, and the shadow).

Two more works that deserve a special mention are the two which omit the human figure, that is Mother, our house is on fire, which thank God is only a fragment of the artist's imagination, and which depicts a room full of artworks and set on fire - maybe a reflection of an inner turmoil and hidden thoughts. The other, Green house effect, depicts an abandoned real greenhouse found in Sa Maison gardens, which emanates an atmosphere of ruins, loneliness and a bygone era - a moment in time which we experience ever so more rarely nowadays in a rushed life where a pause is almost forbidden.

The colour green is very predominant in these works and when I asked Nicole how come she uses this colour so much and so boldly, the answer was a simple one, "It's my favourite colour and I love using it". The palette is a limited one, bold greens, blues, a subdued orange, grey and pink, and the occasional burst of strong red. All of this is capturing the almost framed images that scream instagrammability and even though the works portray these individuals lost in their thoughts and worlds, there is a strong feel of curation of the self-image, in the composition and how an image will be "liked" by the online social world.

You might have noticed that the titles of the artworks are quite unusual and intriguing. They form an integral part of the artwork and give a different dimension and narrative, following a first glance at the works. The titles are derived from the artist's thoughts while executing the painting or lines of poetry or lyrics from a song being played while working on the particular artwork.

The whole oeuvre emphasis the contemporaneity of the theme in the life of a young artist and her peers - an exquisite freshness and rawness which can be translated as a response to the urge for the tangible and a halt from the online while still being influenced by all that's going on. Or perhaps it is an infinite loop for the need to translate our mundane life to the online and retranslate it all back to the offline.

The exhibition is curated by Art Sweven and is being held at il-Kamra ta' Fuq in Mqabba until 12 September