The artist, when he looks, creates.
The art is all abstract.
There are several readings of Astonishment. The first is the most immediate: a little girl watches, enlightened and amazed, the multicolored spectacle of a butterfly dancing around some orchids. Astonishment tells of his amazement, his joy, that indefinable sensation of mystery and contemplation that often abandons us with age. But the little girl's gaze is also that of the artist. An artist is someone who knows how to continue to be amazed by the spectacle of life in its multifaceted appearances.
Here a second interpretative level already takes over: children do not have a predetermined representation of reality. On the contrary, this is defined by age and personal experiences. By watching, children themselves create the language with which, as adults, they will narrate reality. The analogy with the artist's activity is twofold: the artist, even when he does hyperrealism, creates a new way of narrating what he sees. He interprets it and re-PRODUCES it. Reality is transfigured in its interpretation which is, first of all, a new language through which to express it. This is why, in Astonishment, the little girl who looks, who is a perceiving but also a creating subject, is represented with a strong, even if not complete, realism (woe to mistaking a portrait for the faithful reproduction of a person!), but the orchids take on more stylized, almost abstract shapes, in a game of perspective, created by lines that connect the various flowers and numerous butterflies. Whoever looks, internally and silently creates these links between objects, their relationships in space, their meaning. Whoever watches MEANS reality.
And finally: the stylistic difference is doubly intentional. On the one hand it serves to avoid confusing the viewer: the author does not want to do hyperrealism. On the other hand, it aims to induce the viewer to reflect on the relationship between figurative art and abstract art. Are they substantially different? Or rather do they feed each other, in a game of mirrors, in an escape that is at the same time research, towards understanding what it means to make art?
