We live surrounded by images. We scroll through them on our phones, we cross them in the street, we forget them a few instants later. And yet the images that remain within us are not necessarily the most spectacular ones. They are the ones we have truly learned to look at.
To look does not simply mean to see. Seeing is an automatic gesture; looking is a choice. It requires time, silence and a willingness to let oneself be surprised.
Many of my works are not born in front of a canvas, but long before. They are born from a half-open door, from a chair left empty, from a wall worn by time, from a light that enters a room. They are details that almost everyone ignores, but which hold a story.
The artist does not invent the world: he listens to it. He seeks what remains when the noise moves away. In that moment a place becomes memory, an object becomes presence and an absence begins to speak.
I suggest a small exercise. Stop for a few minutes in a place you know well. Do not look for anything extraordinary. Observe the light, the shadows, the traces left by time. Ask yourselves what story they tell.
Perhaps you will discover that the deepest images are not those that try to strike us, but those that wait for us patiently, until we truly learn to look at them.
Karam Sebastiano Cannarella