Two-sided interactive mixed media paper installation, rotating 360 degrees: photographic artwork on paper and 169 hexagonal elements in gold-metallized pressed cardboard. Villa Ciani, Lugano.
LVGA/XY Astro Bee continues Catania's exploration of the dialogue between nature and technology, placing flowers, bees and the epic figure of our age, the astronaut, on the same plane. At its heart stand the bees: creatures essential to the planet's biodiversity and to human survival, yet threatened by our own civilisation, here embodied by a swarm of white paper bees inhabiting the entire surface among the flowers of the artist's garden.
The installation is a lunar disc with two faces, rotating a full 360 degrees. One side, entirely in paper, is the Moon itself: not a generic image but the dark side, photographed by the artist from Rovio, the village where he lives and works. The other side carries a monumental honeycomb of 169 hexagonal tiles whose gold-metallized surface pays tribute to the mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope. As the work turns, nature and technology endlessly exchange places, two faces of a single body.
Each of the 169 tiles is a unique signed piece that can be collected individually, linked to a digital twin certified on the blockchain of the City of Lugano. Presented at Lugano NFT Fest and donated to the City, the work turned collecting into an act of participation, with all proceeds destined for charity.
