Looking to add a little culture to your weekend plans? This Friday 27th February (tomorrow), States of Matter lands at Il-Kamra ta’ Fuq in Mqabba, running till Sunday 15th March and displaying the works of Italian-born artist Luca Indraccolo.

Known for his strikingly realistic oil paintings and strong focus on figurative, narrative art, Luca’s new exhibition explores a fascinating question: how does an image change when it’s reinterpreted again and again?

Curated by Melanie Erixon, States of Matter brings together a series of recent works – including oil paintings, drawings, and drypoint intaglios – that revisit the same motifs while shifting medium, scale, format and colour.

Rather than showing physical transformation, the works reveal emotional and psychological shifts. Subtle changes in line, tone and composition alter the mood and meaning of each figure, inviting viewers to look closer.

The exhibition also offers insight into Luca Indraccolo’s creative process. Many of the final paintings begin life as small thumbnail sketches before evolving through multiple stages. But in States of Matter, these preparatory works aren’t treated as stepping stones – they’re presented as finished pieces in their own right, each with its own clarity, presence and emotional weight. Some works remain purely linear drawings, while others blur the line between drawing and painting, testing how a subject behaves when materials change.

This layered approach echoes a long artistic tradition, recalling figures like James McNeill Whistler and Gustav Klimt, who reinterpreted images across different media to expand their expressive range.

Luca Indraccolo is no stranger to reinvention himself. After spending 15 years working as an Art Director for major international agencies including Saatchi & Saatchi in London, he made the decision to pursue fine art full-time.

His journey took him from New York, where he studied artistic anatomy, to Florence at the Florence Academy of Art, and later to London to complete his training at the London Atelier of Representational Art.

His work has since been exhibited internationally across the UK, the US and Malta, and featured in publications such as 40 Portrait Masters, Artists & Illustrators magazine, and locally, the Times of Malta.

If you’re curious about the space between sketch and finished masterpiece, this is one exhibition worth stepping into.

Intrigued?