Debut solo exhibition merges philosophical inquiry with Renaissance-inspired technique

Hedymeles marks the debut solo exhibition of artist Eric Attard, presenting a body of work that merges philosophical inquiry with Renaissance-inspired technique.

The project is grounded in a short novel Attard authored, exhibited here as a hand-bound volume available for visitors to read. However, the paintings are not mere illustrations; they stand as autonomous works that extend the novel’s mythic and post-human themes into the visual realm, weaving narratives where beauty, cruelty, and desire converge.

Justice

Attard’s practice resists the accelerated pace of contemporary image culture. Each work unfolds through a slow, layered process rooted in Renaissance methods. Drawing on the legacy of Leonardo and Michelangelo, light builds from beneath, and the narrative emerges within an otherworldly luminosity. Built through as many as twenty layers of paint, these surfaces achieve remarkable depth and radiance. The result is a magical realism that fuses classical sensibilities with fantastical invention.

The imagery oscillates between the grotesque and the sensual: menacing harpies, a wise, talking caper bush, and hybrid beings charged with violence and eroticism. These figures channel Attard’s engagement with mythology as a lens through which to explore post-human existence and the rejection of societal constraints. By situating myth in dialogue with contemporary excess and disillusionment, Hedymeles reclaims the act of painting as both narrative and resistance — resistance to speed, to digital consumption, and to the one-minute spectacle.

Eric Attard

About the artist

Attard began his artistic journey in 2008 at the School of Art, where he studied fine art as a teenager. In the years that followed, he became mostly self-taught. His passion for exploring the intersection of philosophy and visual art continues to guide his practice today, oftentimes as a visual escape from the mundane or bleak. Drawing inspiration from both philosophical concepts, Renaissance aesthetic sensibilities, and natural phenomena, his work often gravitates towards magical realism. He has participated in numerous collective exhibitions, and Hedymeles is his first solo exhibition.

Heydymeles will open on 21 September and run until 5 October at il-kamra ta' fuq in Mqabba.