Reinventing the wheel 

Aaron Bezzina

Curator Eleni Riga 

Opening Wednesday 25 October, 8-11 pm 

Open: 26, 27, 29 October, 5-21 pm 

Snehta Satellite, Kefallinias 39, Kypseli 11257, Athens

Reinventing the wheel is the first solo show exhibition of the Maltese artist Aaron Bezzina in Athens. The exhibition is informed by the Wheel of Human Life, an icon from 1800 from the collection of the Byzantine Museum in Athens. The wheel of human life has been a recurrent motif since antiquity, mostly used during the Byzantine and post-Byzantine period to express the vanity of human earthly life. Both the didactic allegory of the wheel and the idiomatic metaphor “reinventing the wheel” offer a remarkable coherence to the artist’s existential quests about vanity and mortality. By using the wheel, an archetype of human ingenuity, Bezzina examines the essence of artistic gesture and shows a scepticism and sarcasm towards artwork’s ontology and legitimacy. The artists creates a closed loop system that perpetually repeats itself, questioning the idea of use value and commodification of the artwork. The Greek myth of Sisyphus comes to complete and underline the conscious absurdity of the mechanical repetition.

Aaron Bezzina (b. 1991) lives and works in Malta. Bezzina has recently graduated from the master Fine Arts in Digital Arts from the University of Malta and holds a BA in  Fine Arts from MCAST Institute of Art and Design in Malta. He focuses on existential questions related to mortality and philosophical issues such as the immersion of art and the ontology of the artwork with a distinct sense of irony and sarcasm.  Exhibitions include: MEMENTO MORI: Hints Taken From Terror Management Theory (a Fragmenta event), Ghajn Tuffieha Tower, Il-Mellieha, Malta/ HOMO MELITENSIS: AN INCOMPLETE INVENTORY IN 19 CHAPTERS, Malta Pavilion – La Biennale di Venezia, Arsenale, Venice, Italy, IN TRANSIT: Contemporary Media Art by Artists from Malta, NRW-Forum, Düsseldorf, Germany & Stadskantoor, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands.

Aaron Bezzina has been at Snehta throughout October as the inaugural recipient of the Blitz-Snehta Residency. The Blitz Residency Programme is a core strand of  Blitz’s artistic and public programme, created to facilitate a long-term, international artistic cultural exchange, while fortifying its role as cultural incubator and advocate organisation for contemporary art practice in Malta. The Blitz Residency Programme is supported by the Valletta 2018 Foundation. Blitz is supported by Arts Council Malta through a Cultural Partnership Agreement.