Size matters

Since the emergence of abstract expressionism and action painting in the 1950s, both heralding the reign of the New York-style loft, the notion that scale-is-all has become a contemporary art diktat: pretty much anything goes as long as it's big.

The "small is beautiful" contingent gets an occasional look-in (here or there, a museum or gallery show spotlighting smaller artworks...), but the overriding rule is that bigger is better; the assumption that upscale collectors only buy oversized canvases, when not investing in videos or installations, is as widespread as the "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" cliché. So, small wonder that aspiring big-timers associate "playing their cards right" with producing XXL series, preferably instantly recognisable from afar.

Whether artistically inclined or not, tourists pouring into Picasso's birthplace this summer cannot miss Javier Calleja's cartoon-like five-metre high totemic sculpture posted at the entrance of Calle Molina Lario; five cheeky-looking saucer-eyed characters of various sizes and facing in distinct directions will usher them from the Malaga Palacio hotel to the Cathedral, and beyond to the Centro Cultural Fundación Unicaja, housed in the Episcopal Palace, where this "mondo-Malagueño" - a local celebrity - presents an arty concept entitled Mr. Günter: The Cat Show (until 6 September).

Malaga-born, Granada graduate, Javier's Günter The Cat extravaganza marks a homecoming in more senses than one: a few moons ago, in that very same Episcopal Palace, he worked as an assistant helping to install other artists' exhibitions, light years away from imagining himself in the shoes of a future auction-buster; his whirlwind success is a dream he hopes "never to wake up from".

Spotted by Hong Kong-Tokyo trailblazer Nanzuka, Calleja is now also represented by Paris- New York- London- Brussels- Shanghai-based gallery owner Almine Rech, co-founder of the Almine and Bernard Ruiz Picasso Foundation (FABA), with her Picasso-grandson husband, Bernard.

Javier Calleja's soft-edged monumentality is eye candy: the way into his limitless creative wonderland; a giant Mickey Mouse greets us with open arms at the entrance of the show, which rotates around a succession of larger-than-life figures, including Günter, its feline MC.

However, there is more to this Little Big Boy's rapport with size than meets the eye, and an in-situ conceptual fantasy called Pencil Boy provides the key to this ambivalence. Featuring an adult-sized free-standing figure - a pencil-clasping 'junior artist' poised to begin a sketch - amid gigantic domestic objects (for instance, a scaled-up table and chair), it defies the onlooker's sense of scale.

Whether large or small formats, his finely executed drawings and paintings incorporating Anglo-witty meme-ish messages, tug at the heartstrings of the little munchkin inside us, the better to address universal questions. His bright and playful manga-infused line of creative products ranges from monumental eye-catchers to pint-sized "Toy art" - to say nothing of merchandising: socks, sneakers, mugs, T-shirts... furniture - There is no stopping him...! (Proceeds of the 3€ admission fee applicable-to-everybody will go to a children's cancer research fund and to an animal protection charity.)

Wild Flowers is the title of Madrid-born and schooled mainstreamer Jorge Galindo's exuberantly expansive bouquet of wall-filling floral canvases on display at the CAC contemporary art centre - "wild" as in unchained, unbridled, rather than in the wispy traditional sense.

A former street artist for want of studio space, this internationally lauded Madrileño mishmashes a potpourri of salvaged refuse (torn cardboard, waste paper...), recycled objects and digital images into his excruciatingly expressionistic albeit oddly elegant billboard-sized compositions.

In this instance, the scale-space interplay is vertiginous, verging on the cinematographic - a big screen sensibility confirmed by a spectacular collaboration with Pedro Almodóvar. In 2019, Jorge and Pedro painted torridly florid "impure" daubs over XXL photographs of vases and flowers taken by the filmmaker, who credits Galindo with "inventing him as a painter".

Certain exhibits, notably those alluding to Ancient Rome's reputedly lustful "Floralia" spring festival, exude fleshy, organic, almost insectivorous... ecstasy.

Echoes of de Kooning's raw visual vocabulary remixed with Pollock-style floor choreography, at times tempered by unexpected winks at the P&D (Pattern & Decoration) art movement fashionable in the late 1970s, are propelled into the present with dazzling mastery. In an epithet, grandiose.