The Artist
Cesare Catania is a contemporary artist born in Italy and who, like many other artists today, now feels like a citizen of the World. Born as a painter of abstract and informal art, he soon revealed himself to critics as a much more sophisticated artist, first showing himself as a sculptor of geometric art, then a hyper-realist painter and in recent years also a digital artist and video artist too. And he does all this firsthand. In artistic production he does not delegate. He does. He creates. He is inspired and transforms his emotions and those of others into design and matter.
The Painter Cesare Catania
Born in Milan in 1979, he leads a process of traditional studies, not strictly linked to art but more aimed at mathematics, science, engineering, all disciplines which, together with his love for music and photography, soon give a true, genuine artist is brought to light, an artist who until now has allowed himself to be influenced mainly by himself and not by artistic fashions or the contemporary art market.
We interviewed him for you.
Cesare, how do emotions arise within you and where do inspirations come from?
My approach to life, and consequently to art, is absolutely free and free of superstructures. I try to be open to the world around me and try to have as few prejudices.
I believe that emotions arise in all of us. You just have to be able to listen to them… In my case I listen to them in silence, I just try to understand what is moving me and why it does so. I then wait for this kind of emotion to mature and become, as I say, “round”. The moment this shapeless mass of feelings sediments into something deeper takes the shape of a sphere, then at that point for me the emotion has become an inspiration and deserves to be expressed. How do I do it? Well…. In many ways: it can become a sculpture, a painting, both, or first a painting and then an NFT…. It depends on how I feel and how I think that kind of emotion can best be expressed. “At its best” for me, not for others…
“Harlequin in the Land of Giants” – Oil on Canvas (2017)
Do you define yourself as a Physical or Digital artist?
I know I am an artist because I have chosen art as an expressive means through which to give voice to my most intimate world, between emotions, feelings and thoughts. It therefore matters little whether I am a physical or digital artist. And it matters little, at the same time, how art in turn manifests itself, in what form or product, what type of production (painting, sculpture, digital creations) it gives life to.
In this sense, therefore, art is the means that conveys the artist’s internal microcosm but does not depend at all on the “medium” that the artist chooses to reveal himself to the world.
Figurative or material art, oil painting, watercolor, mixed techniques, sculpture in marble or wood, glass etc, NFTs and creations from the Metaverse, and much more: what matters is that all these expressive forms have value and ability to penetrate.
By virtue of this thought of mine, I love the most daring experiments, I appreciate the most disparate contaminations and I am open to the most unusual influences: for this reason I often change the instrument through which I “work” with emotions. I feel receptive and loving challenges.
Let’s say that sometimes I am a sculptor, sometimes a painter and sometimes a digital artist: it depends, in short, on the technique I choose to use… but it is always me, Cesare Catania, curious and experimental, who in the constant search for new horizons and expressive means , however, wants to try its hand at a production capable of remaining coherent and faithful to itself over time and in its principles, while changing the playing field or means through which it can be enjoyed from time to time.
In general, however, I don’t like definitions, because they often end up being enclosures in which it is impossible to express oneself fully.
The Artist Cesare Catania
When you think about NFTs and the Metaverse for the future, what do you think of?
Certainly NFTs and the Metaverse have given a new life to art and artists in general. I had been creating digital art since 2017 and I did it mainly for educational purposes to explain my cubist works in a clearer and more defined way. At the beginning I didn’t believe that that kind of digital processing could become a recognized work of art. However, I soon realized that, at least from a personal and emotional point of view, the production of 3D animations gave me the opportunity to explore new fields of expression compared to traditional art, as if the two subjects were complementary to each other. And this was already before there was talk of NFTs and the Metaverse…
The canvas and physical matter had the limits of size, space and gravity. 3D art and crypto art are not…
NFTs were initially considered mostly a speculative instrument. This served to bring public opinion’s attention to a topic that in fact could have been considered “niche”. So from a certain point of view it was good that the press and finance realized that art deserved more attention. On the other hand, however, it was clear that monkeys and figurines could not be considered works of art like digital artistic creations or oil on canvas. I therefore believe that the concepts of NFT and Metaverse are still at the beginning, in the sense that we are approaching a historical moment in which both devices and people are approaching this world in a finally organic way. The initial explosion was forced. People and artists, the real ones obviously, need to metabolise this expressive medium and make it their own.
Therefore, welcome to the Metaverse and to NFTs understood as pieces of art and to be collected, as long as these are actually the result of inspiration, a sedimentation of emotion and an artistic production consistent with the thoughts of the artist himself. And this obviously presupposes that the physical artist will also have to become digital and that the digital artist will also have to become physical. Probably in the future there will no longer be a distinction between the two types. The artist is one and that’s it…
CESARE CATANIA BIOGRAPHY
Cesare Catania is an Italian artist. Painter, sculptor and digital artist, born in 1979, he began his successful career some time ago, merging tradition and innovation in his production, embracing technology and innovation. His work is dominated by a strong attachment to contemporary art, in a perfect balance among the painting, sculpture and digital creations.
After more than a decade of success and exhibitions all over the world playing the role of traditional artist, in the last period Catania has aroused enthusiasm and interest from critics also thanks to its production closely connected to digital art, first used as a teaching tool to explain in simple and intuitive way his hermetic and cubist works of art, then used to create real digital masterpieces that are “minted” as NFT.
Catania realizes his works using different materials: oil on canvas, permeated with both hyperrealism and cubism, steel, silicone and digital art. Particular attention deserves the “Catania Technique”, a mixed technique created by the artist and based on a mix of silicone, acrylic and mineral pigments, giving the canvas and sculptures a very special material effect.
Graduated in Civil Engineering, Catania expresses his technical preparation and his aptitude for the scientific disciplines in his artistic production more linked to geometry and mathematics but also to the Metaverse.
Furthermore, involved in several philanthropic initiatives, the artist is carrying out the “Embrace Project”: it is a very ambitious, inclusive and itinerant socio-cultural artistic project, with the aim to develop a “democratic art”, for everyone everywhere, able to bring people together in a continuous act of exchange and sharing.
Fascinated by modern art, architecture, cubism and the Masters of the Classical Age, Cesare Catania has recently completed an Artist-in-Residence Project with solo exhibition in Venice.
