Anthony Catania’s Antler Cry is a solo exhibition that confronts the viewer with uncompromising intensity. Opening at the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta, the show explores the boundaries between vision and consequence, using myth as a lens to examine human perception, transformation, and the cost of looking too closely.

Catania does not retell the myth. Instead, he uses it as a mirror to explore the cost of seeing what we are not meant to see. His canvases, marked by violent strokes, dark hues, and raw texture, challenge the comfort of the spectator. Each painting is a psychological excavation, exposing the hidden tensions beneath our polished surfaces.

Malta, Catania’s birthplace, is both muse and mirror. The island’s sun-soaked beauty, layered history, and tension between the sacred and the profane pulse through his work. His figures — rough, distorted, and almost clawed from the canvas — carry the influence of Francis Bacon while retaining a uniquely Maltese gravity.

The exhibition begins quietly with Whispers in the Ashen Thicket, a deceptively still scene charged with tension, and builds to Antlered Transfiguration Under Death’s Gaze, a monumental canvas depicting metamorphosis and chaos. Standing before it, viewers confront both awe and unease — perhaps even the psychological punishment of Actaeon himself.

Catania’s work reminds us that truth is not always gentle, and beauty can wound as much as it reveals. In an age of fleeting images, Antler Cry demands attention, reflection, and feeling.

Opening Hours: 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM daily (closed 19, 24, 25, 31 December and 1 January)