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Mark Anastasi
 | Biography: FANTASY IN STONE
MARK ANASTASI (1961-)
Structures, castles, towers, ramps, tiers, spiral and rectilinear flights of steps that reach upward towards the clouds and sky above. Echoes, or an interpretation of the hanging gardens of Babylon, the tower of Babel, the architectural structures carved in the rock at Petra, picturesque terraced fields hanging from the cliff face at Mtahleb, Malta or in China carved in soft ‘globigerina’, honey coloured limestone. These structures of modules in repeated clusters, in tiered ziggurats and pyramids reach upward in an architectonic balance of spaces, volumes and forms.
Mark Anastasi is a sculptor imbued with a musical flair for form. His works emanate rhythm, harmony, cadence and nuance. He is a fantastic dreamer with a natural inclination towards hewing ‘franca’ or ‘globigerina’ (Malta) stone. His obsession, his fixation is so overwhelming that it leaves him breathless, hardly able to wean away from it. He seems prolific for he contracted such fixation in a sudden and abrupt manner and since then has created continuously and assiduously. It descended on him like a traumatic bout that dominates and dictates his moods, that clears everything in its path.
Mark’s work is like a maze of passages, a labyrinth similar to the underground caves at Knossos of the legendary and mythological Minotaur. He carves into the stone like a bookworm, like a woodworm – catacombs and hypogea terraced and multi-layered without weakening the block. He cuts, hews, carves and sculpts as if one possessed, inspired by the ‘daemon’, modelling with verve and élan quite unique until he arrives at the core. The end result is an arabesque tracery or decorative lace, the honeycomb quality of a coal-mine with the relentless risk, enthusiasm and fever of an adventurer, explorer, researcher or navigator in a jungle, forest or ocean.
His frenzied efforts resemble those of a mystic trying to unravel the mystery of creation, ‘The Celestine Prophecy” or the endless search for truth, but, since such yearning is relative, highly illusive and vague he hardly obtains satisfaction or relief. Thus the process becomes endless, infinite and irreversible.
One of the works resembles structured salt pans, organised vertically like waterfalls. Every pan or saucer rests on pillars or stalagmites of the one below it. On its flat top or plateaux the observer discovers the ruins of massive fortifications. Castles,... to see complete biography, click on artists name Country: Malta Birthyear: 1961 Media: sculpture Style: fantasy |
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