Desire & its Excess is an exhibition by artist Lawrence Buttigieg, that explores desire as an embodied, relational, and unruly force - one that resists closure while continuously generating meaning, intimacy, and creative energy. Bringing together painting, box-assemblage, and film, the exhibition examines how desire emerges through encounters with the other, particularly within the charged space of the artist's studio. Gloria Lauri-Lucente is the curator of this exhibition which will run until 1 March at Spazju Kreattiv in Valletta.
At the heart of the exhibition lies the relationship between artist and female subject, understood not as a simple dynamic of observation, but as a reciprocal and sensorial exchange. While erotic tension is unmistakably present, here Desire unfolds as a multifaceted drive: the urge to look, to render, to touch through vision, to imagine, to create, and to sustain proximity and trust. These impulses exceed fixed meanings, revealing desire as ambivalent, unstable, and perpetually in motion.
The works on display foreground the body as a site of alterity - simultaneously familiar and other - capable of unsettling the self and drawing it outward. Vision plays a central role, not as a detached act of mastery, but as a shared field in which seeing and being seen intertwine. The gaze becomes tactile, collapsing distance and binding bodies, objects, and viewers into a continuous experiential circuit.
In Desire & its Excess desire is never resolved or satisfied. Instead, it circulates between bodies, materials, and spectators, extending beyond the studio into the exhibition space itself. Viewers are invited to enter this field of exchange, where artworks do not merely present images of bodies, but respond - visually, affectively, and imaginatively - activating new forms of longing, curiosity, and engagement.
'Desire & Its Excess' is being held at Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta until 1 March. Opening hours: Mondays closed; Tuesdays and Fridays from 9am to 9pm and Saturdays and Sundays from 10am to 9pm