MICROCOSMS OF WONDER
MICROCOSMI DI MERAVIGLIA
MICROCOSMS OF WONDER
Curated by Stefania Carrozzini
Artists: Lauren Banuvar, Stefania Carrozzini, Roni Lynn Doppelt,
Antonio Fasano, Naomi Friedman, Dena Haden, Jacqueline Real,
Alexandra Kauka, Ines Mantel, Anya Pesce, Susanne Weber-Lehrfeld
Date: FROM SATURDAY OCTOBER 26 TO NOVEMBER 9, 2024
Opening reception: SATURDAY OCTOBER 26, 2024
6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
MICROCOSMS OF WONDER
Microcosms of Wonder explores the hidden beauty and importance of small things that often go unnoticed. Through a variety of artworks, the exhibition invites visitors to discover and celebrate the extraordinary in the ordinary and to appreciate the details that make up our world. Microcosms of Wonder is not just a small, self-contained world, but environments that evoke a sense of wonder and curiosity.
The artist’s eye can capture the complexity and beauty of larger systems on a smaller scale, inviting us to explore the wonder hidden in details that we might otherwise overlook. Microcosms symbolize how beauty and complexity are present in the most subtle things, encouraging a deeper appreciation of both the grand and the small aspects of life.
Art is a journey that reveals a universe of wonder and invites us to rethink our place in the natural world. By observing the tiny, we gain a deep appreciation for the interconnectedness of all life and the extraordinary ingenuity that thrives at every scale, as we continue to explore the boundless beauty that surrounds us, visible and invisible.
One cannot speak of the microcosm without thinking of the macrocosm. Infinity passes through us in every cell of the body, in our thoughts as in our every breath. And creative inspiration follows these routes, encompassing the horizon of both worlds to return them in another form. Unpredictability is part of wonder, because the artist through emotional involvement tries to touch the limits and boundaries of the artistic experience itself. He tries to give back to the viewer the sense of wonder that comes from his research.
In the creative spheres of existence, wonder is not a naïve concept but the ability to see reality and understand that by its nature the work of art “does not reproduce anything” as Heidegger wrote, because the work does not represent, does not resemble, it is rather a sort of presentation of an organism, of a creature that exposes its meaning.
Art, like philosophy, begins with wonder; more precisely, this feeling seems to be at the origin of our aesthetic appreciation; think of the art of the so-called avant-garde, whose aesthetics seems to coincide exactly with the intent to arouse a sense of wonder (and shock) in the spectator. In a specifically aesthetic sense, wonder denotes that unexpected and unusual pleasure that sometimes comes from reading a book, listening to a symphony, contemplating a painting, or even seeing a landscape, even in the absence of the “wonderful”. But awareness of the wonderful is not a simple aesthetic pleasure, but rather a particular type of pleasure, at the origin of which there may be an initial moment of disorientation. Because obviously, not everything that is wonderful gives pleasure. The artist who wanted to communicate only a sense of shock or wonder would have an easily interceptable motive. Taking into account that the wonderful is not amazement or even surprise, it is a quality of the eye and the heart, before being an object, it is a thread underlying the largest part of Being. Wonder is related to ecstasy and contemplation and requires the suspension of the ordinary cognitive structure. It is a faculty of being able to dialogue through objects and usual situations, with the infinite. It is perhaps also a matter of survival. It is knowing how to see beauty in the free play between imagination and intellect. And it is not an illusory aesthetic device, but an experience not obscured by any intellectual or cultural distortion.
The work of art can regenerate that auroral wonder, atrophied by experience, which allows us to return to seeing a macrocosm in a microcosm and vice versa “a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower” to quote W. Blake (Auguries of Innocence, 1803 vv. 1-2). Art shows us the wonders of nature, and only habit can make us blind. It can give us back a gaze of wonder in the name of truth, making us see the world as a miracle.
Stefania Carrozzini